


Together

by Zoya113



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, Pining, Proof reading is for nerds, paul is just so in love with Emma, so is Melissa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-01-13 06:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 45,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18463208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Emma escapes the Hive’s attempt to infect her, but Paul - infected or not- is still head over heels in love with her, and doesn’t pose as much of a threat when he’s trying to please her. Emma drags infected Paul along to try and cure the apotheosis.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Proof reading is for nerds lol I wrote this at 11:00 on like five hours of sleep

The sound was all around her. Members of the hive were holding her tightly around her wrists and her shoulders, some circled around her to make sure she couldn’t escape if she tried to run.   
No matter how hard she dug her heels in they seemed to pull her through the hospital halls almost seamlessly.   
She couldn’t tell who was holding onto her, she was blinded with panic.   
The hive had dragged her down into an unused room. In sync, about seven pairs of hands pushed her to the ground.   
She hit the linoleum hard and her teeth but down on her tongue.   
Before she could react to anything, the nurse and Nora had pounced down to grab her arms again, pinning her down on either side. She moved to kick at the Hive and two more members moved to restrain her legs. No matter how hard she struggled she couldn’t seem to move at all.   
“Paul!” Emma cried out to him even though it was no use. “Paul please!” She could feel proper tears welling in her eyes.   
Paul stood above her, looming over her small figure.   
“Emma, now it’s your time. We’ll teach you our rhythm and our rhyme. Then you’ll be with me everyday, all you have to do is obey.”   
She searched desperately for any shred of life in him. What a stupid little song.   
Ted and Bill reached down on either side of her to hold her shoulders against the ground, now she was only staring at Paul.  
He stared back with that dumb, know-nothing smile. “Don’t you want to be with me everyday?” He asked hopefully.   
“You? You’re not Paul! You’re one of those infected alien fucks!” She spat. She could feel the infected leaving bruises on her skin with their tight grip.   
How could he say that to her? How could he still go on like he loved her and she could trust him? This wasn’t Paul, this was some alien puppeteering his body around like a marionette.   
She was not going down here in this shitty hospital, not at the hands of her shitty boss or fucking Ted.   
That’d really show Jane how well she was doing.   
Emma’s last plan was to raise absolute hell.   
So she screamed louder than their tune, she fought harder than they could hold her and she broke free.   
She managed to rip her hand free from the Nurse but her nails dragged along her skin until it was bleeding. She lashed out at Ted, pushing him back until she had one whole arm free.  
Her counter-attack seemed to throw the Hive off, once she had managed to pry a third member of the Hive off her skin they all seemed to shy back into the corners like mice.   
Only Paul remained. His eyes were set on the wound on her hand.   
“Together, everyday...” he repeated, strangely absent.  
“Fuck you,” her voice was ragged after screaming for so long. “Fuck this place.”  
Emma grabbed the IV pole that lingered in the corner of the hospital room. It was surprisingly light.   
She wielded it like a sword, keeping Paul at one end while her eyes flickered across the room to keep checks on the other infected. “I’m out of here, I-“ she didn’t know where she would go.   
No footsteps echoed down the hall except her own as she exited the room. She leant her weight on the IV pole, wheeling it along with her.   
It was perfect to double as a crutch and as a weapon, she would’ve applauded herself if she wasn’t busy recovering from a near-death experience.  
Clumsily, she removed the bow from around the neck of her work uniform and tied up the wound on her wrist. Blood still dribbled down onto her palm, caking it in sticky crimson.  
She fumbled down the stairs to the quiet, underground carpark. Her steps echoed too loudly, she wanted to be able to hear if someone was following her.  
The wheels of the IV pole rattled along the cement carpark and her heart was beating out of her chest.   
There was a noise behind her so faint she was unsure it was real.  
She leant more weight on the IV until she could move -albeit very slowly- without her bad leg touching the ground at all.  
She was waiting for bad memories to flood her head and have her collapse in bereavement like in all those tragic movies but nothing happened, it was still too raw to think about.   
Suppressing your problems until they go away, that was the Emma Perkins way about it. She just wasn’t going to think about it until everything was fixed or she died, whatever came first.   
Her thoughts trailed off on their on to the Nantucket bridge, and further into Hatchetfield.  
“Where do you think you’re going?” She addressed herself, yet made no move to change directions as she exited the carpark.   
The sky was a dusky violet and the moon hung low.   
She heard a noise far behind her, but didn’t dare turn around.  
Maybe she could stay in Hidgens’ lab, he still had protection and a bunker and better yet, his notes on the apotheosis. She knew her way around Hatchetfield better than Clivesdale, and she had somewhere to stay and could loot without consequence which had to be a must considering she had no money on her.  
Yeah, Hatchetfield. That sounds like the right place to go.   
As she limped down the road she started thinking of ways to get there. The bridge was raised after all.   
There was that noise again.  
It was definitely too far to swim, she knew that. As a kid, she and Jane would try and swim to Clivesdale every time they came to the beach, but they would both get tired so quickly, and intrusive thoughts about sharks and other dangerous sea animals would force their way into her head and then she would cry.   
It was a strange memory to be holding on to right now. She just prayed there would be a better way across, her leg wouldn’t be able to get her across and she still didn’t care much for the thought of sharks.  
The noise came for a third time, much closer. She wanted to turn around but told herself not to. It was probably a squirrel, or someone out jogging. Turning around meant admitting she was afraid, but when she heard her name called she had no other choice.   
She whipped around, clasping the IV pole so tight her knuckles turned white.   
“Emma,” it was Paul.   
He stood about ten paces down the road from her, silhouetted by the moonlight.  
He had this stupid look on his face, this obsessive, idolising expression.   
If she got any closer, she’d probably see drool on his chin.   
“W-why’re you following me?!” She wanted to stomp her foot like an angry child, but her leg hurt too much.   
Paul took a few dawdling steps closer like a toddler who just learnt to walk. He mumbled her name again.  
Emma distanced herself from him. “Where’s the rest of the Hive? Are they following you?”   
Paul hopped the last few steps towards her to close the distance, his eyes were wide with excitement like he had just met a celebrity.   
“Let’s be together everyday, Emma,” he sung it like that was all he could do. “I just want to be with you, and you must want to be with me too.” He sung it so hopefully.   
Emma swung the IV pole between the two of them to push him back.  
His eyebrows drooped and his shoulders fell like he was disappointed he upset her.   
“Back off,” she warned.   
He managed to grab her injured wrist, his grasp was tight but she could still run if she needed.   
“Emma, your arm. This is my fault you were harmed.” He pulled out the loose knot she had done and tied it back tighter. The blood stopped. “I told them to be gentle, but we were all so excited.” His voice didn’t sound quite like his, There was an underlying tone of ecstasy that he never had, like a child on Christmas morning.   
“Excited? God, weren’t we all,” she huffed, unsure what to think. When he finished tying the knot he didn’t let go of her hand, he wasn’t holding her down but rather he just seemed afraid to let go incase he lost her.  
She pulled her arm back and he was left with his hands hanging awkwardly by his chest, looking like a lost child in a shopping centre.   
“Why are you following me?!” She snapped, she hated the way he was watching her. This wasn’t the Paul she knew, this was some confused alien brat.  
“Can’t you go back to the hive or whatever? Don’t you have to me near them or-“ he looked at her expectantly while she spoke. “You have to be near the rest of the hive to...”   
he nodded to confirm before she could finish. “That’s why you have to come with me! So we can always be with each other. We can sing duets, and we can-“  
“Stop that!” She whacked him across the wrist and while he didn’t seem harmed, he looked shocked. “I am not getting infected. I’m not dying in Clivesdale.”   
“Hatchetfield then?”  
“No!” She threw her hands up in the air, exasperated. “Cut that out!”   
He lowered his head guiltily.   
“I’m going back to Hatchetfield, what are you going to do?”   
“I’ll tell the Hive!” He spun around, ready to run back. “We’ll all go together!”  
She grabbed the collar of his jacket and stopped him in his tracks. “No! You can’t tell them! Fuck, I told you too much.”  
She readjusted her weight on the IV pole, cursing under her breath. “Um, shit.”   
“Well, if they can’t follow...without their songs I’m left feeling hollow, are you sure they can’t come?”   
“Well if they’re only doing it to rip out my guts then fuck no!”   
“But can I come?”   
“Well if you’re going to try and, hmm, how did you put it? Puke in my mouth? Then you can’t.”   
He bit his lip and knitted his brows as if this was a genuine loss for him. “But if I don’t do that, I can follow you?”   
“Well, I guess so.”  
She turned around to continue on her path to the bridge, he followed behind her leaving little to no distance between them.   
It probably looked odd to the last few scattered people still awake: those coming home from late shifts, people out for late night walks, families looking through windows. The sight of a bloodied, messily-dressed girl dragging along an IV pole and a man covered in blue shit seemingly blessing the ground she walked on.   
“I’m still Paul!” He said giddily after a moment of silence. “So, we’re still in love! Aren’t we?”   
She pushed him back with the IV pole again, laughing anxiously. “Jumping a few steps ahead there, bud.”   
He wasn’t disheartened. “Does your leg hurt?” He asked, but before she could answer he swooped her up in his arms. For a moment she thought everything was fine, he didn’t seem intent on infecting her and being carried was going to work out much better than limping the whole way.  
Then, in a movement that stole the air from her lungs he tossed her over one shoulder into less of a bridal carry and more of a fireman’s carry. She gagged, catching her breath.   
“You really think this is a more efficient way to go, huh?” She wormed around, trying to get comfortable.   
“Well, now I can carry this for you!” He grabbed the IV pole in his free hand.   
“If anyone sees this they’re going to think you’re kidnapping me, are you?”   
Paul chuckled confidently. “They won’t think that. And if anyone gets in our way I can just help them join the Hive.”  
“No, you won’t do that,” she scolded him like she was talking to a dog. However she wasn’t sure how much choice they’d have.   
PEIP probably wouldn’t like to hear that she had gone missing with all the secrets they were trying to keep classified.   
They walked for hours into the night, at one point she think she passed out from exhaustion as all her fear finally caught up to her, when she awoke he was still carrying her.  
“Nearly at the bridge,” he commented. “There it is, it’s up. How are you going to cross?”  
She opened her heavy eyes. “Well if you put me down, I can have a look around.”   
“But your leg, doesn’t it hurt?”   
“Just give me the pole,” she snatched it back as he eased her down. She hated being treated like a child.   
The wheels of the IV pole didn’t travel as smoothly across sand, she ditched it on the shore and limped on. “Okay Paul, keep your eyes peeled for a rowboat, or a canoe or something.”   
Paul walked besides her, alerting her of how slow she was moving. “Surely you don’t need to be walking to find a boat. I can carry you. I don’t think you should be walking. But you know if you join the Hive you can’t feel pain.”   
She stuck her tongue out. “If I join the Hive, if I submit, if I get infected,” she mocked his tone of voice. “You sound like a door to door salesman or like, a Jehovah’s witness . If you say one more thing about the Hive you can’t tag along.”   
His eyes flew wide open and he froze up. “Emma!” He winced. “Sorry! Sorry!” He shut his mouth after that, and continued searching.   
“Oh! Hey! Look! Look over there! It’s a fishing boat! Perfect!” Something small was floating in the water further down the beach.  
She broke out into a run, although with her limp it looked more like she was skipping.   
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back up into his arms, breaking into a sprint towards the dark shape bobbing on the shore without breaking a sweat.   
She clenched his suit between her fingers, he was moving so fast she felt he would drop her. “It is a fishing boat, Em!” He cheered. “Look, now we can go to Hatchetfield!” He settles her down in the boat and worked to untie it from its ropes.   
“This almost absolutely counts as theft,” Emma grabbed onto the sides of the small boat as it rocked back and forth in the tide. “But Emma Perkins is legally dead, and no one knows Kelly exists, so that’s a problem for whoever this boat belongs to, not me!” She reached out a hand to help Paul into the boat as he pushed it off the banks.   
The boat rocked violently and they both held onto the sides to steady it. She found herself laughing despite everything.   
“Ready to do this, Paul?” She laughed, indulging herself in a fantasy where Paul was never infected, and they were just out on a romantic, 3am boat ride. That fantasy was promptly shattered as he began to hum a happy little tune of agreement.   
He took the oars and rowed the boat swiftly and proficiently. In one or two minutes, they were already miles from the Clivesdale shore.   
A feeling of dread brewed in her stomach as she realised how isolated she was. She couldn’t escape at this point, she just had to trust him.   
“Are you scared?” He asked when he saw her looking around.   
She bit her lip but didn’t nod.   
“Well you shouldn’t be,” he implied her answer. “Because the Hive’s not really all that bad. What did I tell you, happiness is guaranteed!” He grinned, reaching for her hand.   
She batted it away. “Paul, shut up, sit down, fuck you.”  
“But it’s actually really good! The Hive is what brings us all together!”   
“I told you you can’t tag along if you mention it one more time! And you’re doing it!” She pointed an accusing finger at him.   
“Well what, do you want me to turn this boat around? Are you going to paddle all the way to Hatchetfield?” Emma did not expect Paul to snap back at her, it made her smile ear to ear. “Didn’t think so. I’m the one doing the work here so Emma, please, let me talk about how great the Hive is for like five minutes and if I can’t persuade you-“   
“You can’t convince me to get infected.”   
“If I can’t persuade you then I’ll give it a rest.”   
Emma leant back, looking at him with surprise, and maybe even a similar look of adoration that he had been giving her. “Sure then, give it all you’ve got.”


	2. The bunker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma thinks she might know a way to fix Paul, and as she gets the help of the Uninfected she’s sure she can save him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ft. I thrive off of Hidgens being Emma’s dad content & Melissa gives me life bc she’s a lesbian icon

As the sun crawled above the horizon the small boat shuddered as it hit the shore of Hatchetfield. The sound of music had been building as they rowed closer to the island and now it was overbearing for Emma. It made her chest tighten and her whole body tense.   
She heard familiar voices tied in among the harmonies.   
However frightened the music made her, when Paul started singing it only made her mad.   
He caught sight of her frustrated expression and frowned, hopping out of the boat to pull it onto shore. “Don’t you think it’s a lovely song?”   
It felt like life was playing a joke on her, Paul was the only thing that made her shit life better and she only knew him properly for two days before he had to go play hero. He promised her he would be fine, but he wasn’t, and now he was some weird little zombie alien that followed her around like a puppy.   
“Emma?” He sounded concerned. “You’re crying, do you not like this song? I can sing a different one for you.”   
“Oh, Paul,” she wiped her eyes. “No singing, not right now. I’m tired.”  
“Oh,” he stammered. “But the whole Hive is here, we could sing a song for you and then maybe you’d come through?”   
“Just be quiet for now, please Paul.” He held out a hand to pull her out of the boat. Fortunately he decided not to carry her this time however she noticed he was tapping his feet and clicking his fingers.  
It kept him going for a while as they crossed the beach, but the closer the music grew the paler he looked. A sweat had broke out on his forehead and his hands had started to shake.   
“What’s up?” She asked, grabbing one of his hands to stop it shaking so violently. After a second she pulled back, a red blush spreading across her face. That wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.   
She let her hands hang by her side and it took her a second to realise he hadn’t replied.   
“Paul?”  
The second he opened his mouth a song burst out like it had been waiting there. Only a few strangled notes, like he really was trying to push it down for her.   
He clamped his mouth shut and swallowed, looking down at his feet guiltily.   
“Oh, okay...” she was taken aback and paused to listen for anyone coming their way. “Well you try keep that under wraps, we’ve got to get to the professor’s house. Thank god it’s on the outside of town. It should be pretty safe to get there at least. Hopefully.”   
Paul tapped her on the shoulder, trying to get her attention. She noticed how sickly he was becoming. He gestured down the road, where she could see three infected engaging in a sort of choreographed and playful fight. His movements were starting to mimic theirs and he couldn’t stop himself moving to some beat Emma couldn’t hear.   
Then they got closer.   
“I have to join them!” His voice was more nasally than usual.   
She backed away as his movements became sharper, and then he was breaking out into a full routine. He couldn’t stop himself singing.  
The other three infected noticed him, and invited him over with synchronised movements.   
They entered into a four part harmony and he no longer seemed so desperate to please her, he scampered off to join them, lost in the song.   
“Paul!” She called out in a projected whisper. She ducked down behind a trash can, her heart in her throat. Paul was practically her only line of defence until she got her hands on a weapon. She peered out to watch the four of them, studying them carefully.   
The moment he got close to them he lost all character, he had no desire to stay by her side and couldn’t hold back a song as well as he had been doing when he was separated from them.   
Slowly, a coldness snaked it’s way up through her veins until it felt like every part of her body has slowed down.   
His proximity to the infected! If she could get him apart long enough to get to Hidgens’ bunker then maybe she could take her theory and develop some sort of cure.   
She figured that as the only survivor, now was probably time to get herself to the bunker first. She could travel faster without having to worry about Paul, though his absence left a stinging feeling in her heart. She didn’t have to worry about his safety, and she was probably better off not dragging along an infected Paul with her everywhere she went but it felt so nice to have him by her side again.   
She travelled through the afternoon, taking long and convoluted back paths to ensure no one was following her, she took the old Hidgen’s advice of staying out of densely populated areas, sticking to the shadows of wide open roads and backyards instead of taking the fastest path there.   
The bunker was just as it was left, dark and cold. There were still items scattered across the floor: guns, his jacket, a bottle of beer, at one point her shoes scuffed what might have been the shattered of Alexa. Everything was the same she was sure, except a few doors she didn’t remember being open, and she noticed a stack of organised papers on the table that she was sure had been scattered during their escape.  
She made her way to the kitchen sink to wash her cuts under the cool water. It reminded her of coming home after school a few months after Jane had passed: their   
house was silent and messy, and no one could be bothered to turn the lights on because no one could get out of bed. She jumped from one bad memory to another until she landed on a good one. She had been to her professors house plenty of times, outside of bringing him his groceries too.  
She knew her way around his house like the back of her hand fortunately. He had a guest room on the second floor, but she knew he never had guests over.   
So for now, the guest room was going to be the Emma room now she decided.   
She would get something to eat, catch up on a little bit of rest, find a weapon and then go get Paul.   
She skimmed through his cupboards, trying to find something more appetising than cold tomato soup.   
“Well we could have ‘chicken chunks,’” she announced to herself, squinting to read the label due to the disbelief that any product would be called such a name and still expect to be sold. “Or the equally as appetising ‘chicken chunks.’” She cracked open a can. “Wow, he really liked his chicken soups. Good for him.” It made an awful slurping noise as it slopped into her bowl. “I’m hungry, but I don’t think I could ever be this hungry.” She held her breath. It smelt strange.   
She had been wandering around the bunker for about twenty minutes before she first caught onto a second pair of foot steps. They were on the floor above her, she listened to the weight of them. They were too light to belong to Paul, but didn’t quite have the rhythm of someone fully infected.   
Maybe a very big rat.   
She scrambled through cupboards and shelves, looking for wherever he kept his weapons. Maybe a year ago now she was at his house and was begging to see his stash like a little kid, she wanted to pick up a sword and wave it about so even if she was barely five foot tall she could still feel dangerous. Hidgens always looked down at her and shook his head. ‘You might hurt yourself,’ he would warn her.   
Well now she was going to be a lot worse than hurt.   
Above her, the footsteps froze. She held her breath. Then, the rapid pounding of footsteps shooting down the staircase.   
Emma’s heart just about exploded at the noise, she hurried to the corner of the room, ducking down to make herself as small as possible.   
The door to her room flew open and an unfamiliar girl burst in.   
They stared at each other, wide eyed.   
This must be how a mouse feels, she thought, when somebody tries finds it in their home.   
The girl had a gun in her hand, she was wearing a blouse similar to her own but it was not someone from Beanies.   
Neither of them knew what to say, they were staring at each other for so long it nearly became comfortable.   
“D-don’t shoot,” Emma managed to stutter. “I’m not- I’m hiding. Who are you!”   
Instantly, the girl dropped the gun and fell to her knees. “Oh thank god!” She sighed. “I did not want to have to shoot, I didn’t know what to do. I’m so happy you’re here. I’ve been hiding around town but everyone’s infected! The bridge is raised so when I found his house I just decided to stay here. It has massive walls I- do you live here? Is this yours?”  
Emma shrugged. “It isn’t exactly mine. I mean, I hang out here sometimes but- oh, hey. I should introduce myself. I’m Emma,” she started, edging over slowly.   
The girl smiled bashfully. “I know, I used to go down to Beanies all the time. You probably don’t recognise me.” She was turning red.   
“Oh hey you’re- oh my god! You’re the girl who comes with Paul! What’s your name?”   
“Melissa,” she fumbled with her fingers. “I was a secretary where Paul worked. How do you know Paul’s name?” She asked, and suddenly she looked jealous. “That’s not important anymore actually.” She jumped between topics constantly. “We’re probably the last two uninfected people in Hatchetfield! We should find a way to get to Clivesdale.”   
“I actually just got back from there.”   
“What? Why?”   
Emma rubbed her eyes. She could feel exhaustion creeping in. “Well I don’t really know. I had nowhere else to go. The infected got to Clivesdale, we’re safer in here than out there.” She didn’t have the energy to tell the full story. “I’m going to just go crash for a couple of hours. How about we take turns keeping watch?”   
Melissa nodded. “You look like you haven’t slept in a year!”   
“I feel like it too.”   
As she limped off to the guest bedroom, she thought of Paul and the drastic change in behaviour as he joined in the dance. The way his voice changed, and his personality and his movements the closer he got to the Hive.  
But first things first- sleep time, but the second she got up she was going to save Paul’s ass.


	3. Relapse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma experiments with ways to starve off the infection. Paul doesn’t really like that idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still at it w father figure Hidgens & lesbian Melissa those are just my headcanons anyways.
> 
> In other news was it just me who saw how much beef Paul had with that poor Greenpeace girl who was just doing her job

She stirred from her rest very early in the morning, the sun hadn’t even come out yet. Someone stood in the frame of the doorway, she wasn’t sure how long they’d been there for.  
“Melissa?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Do you want to take a break now? I can keep watch if you need rest.” Her eyes focused and she recognised the figure immediately. “Paul!” She exclaimed. “How did you get in here? Where’s Melissa?”  
His silhouette shifted and came to sit at the foot of her bed. “Emma, you’re going to just love this!” He spoke far too loudly for her liking.  
“Paul, volume. It’s got to be like, 5 in the morning. Can you lower your voice?”  
Paul took her injured hand to inspect it. He continued to turn it back and forth as he spoke. “Well, I went back to Clivesdale, and I told everyone you came back here so now they’ve all come back to find you!” He was grinning widely. “Isn’t that great?”  
In the back of her head she knew it was a good thing the infection was contained in Hatchetfield now, but a more pressing issue presented itself. “You told everyone where I was?” She leapt from the bed, she had to find Melissa.  
“Oh! Oh! They aren’t coming here, you told me you were going to hide out here, so I thought you wanted it to be a secret. I didn’t tell anyone where you were.”  
Her heart rate dropped back down dizzyingly fast, she reached out to the wall to stop herself falling. “Oh my god,” her words were slurred with relief and fatigue. “Okay Paul. I’m going to tell you something and I need you to listen very closely, got it?” She grabbed either side of his face and stared into his naively happy eyes. “I don’t want to join the Hive. Do not tell them I am here. Why isn’t that connecting with you?”  
Paul pressed his hands against hers and stared back into her eyes. “You just don’t know what it’s like.” He seemed perfectly content to hold their position. “You should join the Hive with me!” He made a noise that sounded like he had regurgitated something, and slime started dripping from his mouth.  
She gagged and couldn’t move a muscle.  
“You aren’t you though.”  
“No, I’m Paul! Im still me!”  
“Do you even remember who Melissa is? Do you remember anything outside of me?”  
The happy look on his face faltered and he let go of her hands. “Uh...” he was deep in thought. She sat back down on the bed next to him and he drew her into his lap despite her complaints.  
“Melissa, she isn’t part of the Hive.”  
As if on cue, she could hear the girl’s footsteps down the hall. She peered in through the open door. “Hi, Emma. Sorry to wake you! If it wasn’t a bother I was going to try and get some sleep now, would you mind keeping watch?”  
Emma could see the gun in Melissa’s hand and made an effort to make herself seem as big as possible to cover Paul incase she decided to shoot.  
“Melissa, I think we have to find a way to raise the gates again. Keeping a look out doesn’t seem to stop them getting in,” she pointed to the man who’s lap she was sitting in.  
In a flustered, panicked movement Melissa fumbled with the gun, trying to set it upright. She had stumbled a bit when she first caught sight of his shadowy figure and was pressing her shoulder against the wall to balance herself.  
“Are you- are you infected! What’s going on!”  
“Oh, no. She’s not infected.” Paul reached over Emma’s shoulders to wrap his hands protectively around her. “She told me no. She said no singing or dancing and she’s just finished telling me how she doesn’t want to join the Hive, for now that is!” He answered, resting his head on top of Emma’s. “I’m Paul,” he introduced himself.  
The colour drained from Melissa’s face. “Paul? From CCRP?”  
Paul stared at her with an expectant look, like he thought she was going to elaborate.  
Emma elbowed him. “Yes, that’s you!” She hissed.  
“Oh! Yes that’s me.”  
“So what’s going on here?” She relaxed noticeably but kept the gun raised.  
“Well he is infected, sort of, I’m not sure. He’s just been following me around like a lost dog, or an imprinted duckling or something. He’s pretty obedient, just really weird.”  
“And you let him follow you?”  
“For the time being, yeah. I was going to use him to find a cure for the infection.”  
Melissa sighed and flipped on the light switch. The two girls flinched at the brightness, but quickly adjusted.  
Paul had no reaction to the light at all, but the second he saw Melissa, Emma felt him tense.  
“Oh that’s Melissa!” He said triumphantly, holding onto Emma tighter. “I’m in love with Emma,” he announced.  
Emma noticed how her grip on the gun did not drop. “You’re infected! You don’t get to love her! You probably don’t even have feelings! Ugh, that’s so unfair!”  
Paul wrapped himself around the small girl. “The Hive doesn’t even want you.”  
“Sorry about him, Melissa. I’ve got no clue why he’s so clingy around you.” She tried to pry one of his hands off her arm.  
Melissa slumped and crossed her arms. “I know why.” She screwed up her face. “We get it Paul! You’re in love with Emma, aren’t we all?”  
Paul was holding onto Emma tighter than he ever had before as if Melissa was a threat. She could find no possible way out of his grip. “Well, Melissa, Paul. I think you’re both just going to have to put up with each other no matter what little feud you’ve got going on. Can you guys do that for me? The last thing we need is infighting.”  
Begrudgingly, they both quieted down. “Well now that I’m up, I may as well get started for the day. You try and catch some sleep Melissa.” The secretary handed her the gun as she got out of bed. Emma tucked it in between the elastic of her shorts.  
“Paul, can you give me a hand in the lab?”  
He nodded and hurried to follow her. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Melissa make a face at him.  
“You know your way around the bunker pretty well,” Paul commented.  
“Well I did not spend a lot of time at my parents house when I moved back from Guatemala, that’s for sure.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Before I found my own apartment I actually spent a lot of time here.”  
“With your Biology Professor?”  
Emma shrugged. “He was a bit more like a dad figure really. My real dad was an asshole, especially after Jane passed.”  
She heaved open the door to the lab.  
The air was cold and dry.  
There were no windows, but the blue goo left in the vials scattered across the room had a slight bioluminescence to them.  
Paul flicked the switch and the room lit up with a white, blinding light.  
“So what will you try out today?” He didn’t quite seem to grasp the concept of what she was testing.  
“I’m looking for a cure to this whole infection bullshit. I have a few theories to test out: isolation from the hive, prohibiting singing, I have to try to starve off the infection.”  
Paul bit down on his lips but kept a polite smile. “But I don’t want to be apart from the Hive. And won’t that hurt?”  
Emma frowned, leaning across one of the lab benches. “Paul, your whole schtick was that you hated musicals.” They maintained a tense eye contact for a minute or so before Emma broke away to search through the cupboards. “Hidgens’ left his notes on the Apotheosis but he never thought of a cure. I guess that’s all for me now.”  
“Maybe Hidgens’ didn’t leave a cure on purpose! I can tell you now that he’s really enjoying the Hive, I can talk to him right now, I can tell you his thoughts exactly! That’s the best part of the Hive and I’m really thinking you should reconsider this!” He was backing up towards the exit as she rifled through cupboard and boxes of equipment. “Oh don’t be a baby, you’ll be find once you’re clean.” She pulled a box of tools up onto the bench. Everything inside clashed together with a satisfying noise as it hit the table. “Then,” she pointed at him directly. “Then we can really be ‘together for ever’ or whatever it was you said.” She fished around for something in the box. “Never repeat that.”  
“You don’t need to eat or sleep, do you?”  
Paul squinted suspiciously. “Why?”  
“I’m just preparing.” She studied over Hidgens’ notes about the Hive and the connection they shared.  
Hypothetically, if she were to disconnect him from the Hive he couldn’t do any of this singing shit.  
Until she could destroy the meteor for real, this was her second best plan.  
Paul skimmed through the notes over her shoulder. “How about you test this on someone else? Like a squirrel or a bug- isn’t it just cruel to do it to us?”  
“Charlotte literally tried to kill Ted, but go off I guess.” She sat Paul down in a chair, looking at him thoughtfully. “But you know what, that’s not a bad idea. We need you on our side for now. Is there any way you can lure someone here?”  
Paul blinked, clasping his hands together. “What are you going to do to them, Emma?”  
“I’m going to keep them isolated from the rest of the Hive and see if it has any effects. Hidgens’ said it was a gland or something that lets you communicate right? Well as a biology student I think it’s pretty reasonable to think I can weaken the gland from lack of use. You know, like the appendix or something.”  
“I don’t think the appendix is a gland,” Paul reached out to Emma for comfort he was not going to receive.  
“Oh but you get the idea! If they can’t use the gland it’ll just like, fuck off or something. That’s my hypothesis.”  
“Were you very good at Biology?”  
“If you keep pulling strings you’re going to be the one in isolation Paul,” she threatened, grabbing his tie and leading him out of the lab. “I need you to lure one of them in here.” She pulled the gun out from her waistband. “Let’s go hunting, huh? I should get one of those dumb little coonskin hunting hats,” her joke fell on deaf ears. “Or not.”  
“But the Hive, we’re a family! I can’t trick them like that!”  
Emma summoned her inner 2003 Brigadoon performance and every scrap of ‘theatre kid’ she had left inside her. “Oh Paul, not even for me?” She held a hand to her forehead and poured her lips.  
Paul whimpered, his eyes glanced between her and the door. “I-uh... oh no.”  
She wrapped her hands around his arm, leaning into his side for added effect.  
“Well I guess there’s one girl,” he was taking on a hostile appearance that Emma hadn’t seen in him before. “I know where she is, I suppose I can lure her in. The Hive wouldn’t hurt too much without her,” she could see how deeply he was conflicted but she was curious to see which member of the Hive he could possibly hate so much.  
He lead Emma to the professor’s front lawn. She ducked down low behind the untended shrubs, watching Paul.  
It was like a wolf howling, he started a song to call out to her. She could sense an odd mix of guilt and anger underneath the lyrics.  
Emma tightened her grip on the gun as she could hear someone approaching.  
The song that answered back to him was hitting all sorts of high notes effortlessly. They formed a beautiful yet rather heated duet, she didn’t recognise the voice but whoever it was Paul really hated her.  
When she was a kid she had taken the dog for a walk, he had seen another dog across the street and they both went off at each other, barking at the top of their lungs. Their duet was sort of like that.  
Emma could hear the tap of feet on gravel, and he added scuffling noise that came with it. When she was sure hey had entered into some sort of fast pace choreography she leaned up over the shrubbery to see who it was.  
It was a younger girl with a green apron tied around a pretty floral dress. The apron read ‘Greenpeace.’  
Emma huffed. She wasn’t sure what history the two had, but he did not like her.  
All she had to do was wait for Paul to lead her inside and down to the lab, but he was taking an oddly long time.  
She tried to catch his eye but he had forgotten she was there.  
“Aw fuck.” He had gotten carried away. He was letting himself seep back into the Hivemind again. Now she had no test subject and she wasn’t going to have Paul either if she didn’t do something about it.  
She rose up on one knee, giving Paul one last chance to snap out of it.  
She counted up to ten and then back down. Nothing.  
“Okay!” She hopped up onto her feet, gun pointed. “Get inside!” She felt like she was robbing a bank. “Go on! Now!”  
The both of them were like deer in headlights, staring down the barrel of the gun.  
She cocked it, and then they broke into a sprint, racing for the door.  
She had to follow them closely, she couldn’t let them get near Melissa. Hopefully she would just sleep right through this, she didn’t want to trouble her. Melissa had been hiding out on this infected island for two weeks now, she was in no shape to find her sanctity ruined by some idiot Barista who thinks she’s a scientist.  
Emma chased the Greenpeace girl down into the lab and pulled the sealing door shut. She would deal with her later.  
She stood up on the tips of her toes to grab Paul and push him back against the wall. “You fucked it up for us Paul!”  
His eyes were wide and he was breathing heavily. A few absent lyrics tumbled out of his mouth as he tried to cool down. He lacked any qualities that made him Paul right now, he wasn’t even that clingy half-infected Paul that had been following her around. She was pinning back a Paul who had been completely lost to the Hive.  
Upon realisation she flung herself back, pointing the gun.  
“Paul!” Her voice shook. “Stay still, don’t move!” She elbowed open the door behind her, she vaguely remembered it to be a storage room or a pantry or some sort of closet. Trying to touch him as little as possible she grabbed his tie and pushed him in, slamming the door behind her.  
So she was the one who fucked up this time. Her last hope was that enough isolation could starve off the infection, and that Paul would calm down shortly.  
In the meantime, she had to go confess everything to Melissa.


	4. I knew you’d come home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma never thinks about the consequences.

Without her glasses on, Emma could see the dark circles under Melissa’s eyes. The poor girl probably hadn’t been able to sleep properly for nights now, she couldn’t bear waking her up. She could see how thin she was getting, and even felt her own stomach rumble.   
She stopped to assess things. The singing apocalypse was not over yet, she and Melissa seemed like the only survivors. Paul had messed up but in doing so contained the infection to Hatchetfield and now there were two of them inside the bunker and they still hadn’t gotten the gates up.   
The only probable solution she could see right now was to sit at the foot of Melissa’s bed and aim the shotgun at the doorway.  
Melissa shifted under the covers. “Emma?” She fumbled about for her glasses. “Where’s Paul?”   
“I fucked up big time Melissa,” she didn’t point the gun away from the door. “There’s two of them inside, and I made a mistake, it’s my fault- I think I lost Paul to the infection, I don’t know what’s up with him he just wasn’t him.”   
Melissa sat up, resting her back against the headrest. Even in the way she moved Emma could tell how tired she was.   
“What? Where are they?” She yawned, reaching for her blazer which she had discarded on the floor.   
“I’ve got them locked downstairs but I don’t think anything is stopping Paul from getting out.”   
Melissa slipped out from under the covers and somewhat dazed, she came to sit at the end of the bed with Emma. She put her arm on Emma’s to tell her to lower it.   
“I know you won’t shoot Paul if it comes to it. Don’t waste your energy. How about we go and check on him? Just to make sure he’s still in there. If they’re both trapped then there’s nothing to worry about.”   
Emma nodded, handing the gun back to Melissa. “I feel like I’m gonna throw up,” she placed a hand around her throat. The thought of losing Paul twice made her heart crash against her rib cage. She couldn’t even wrap her head around the idea that it was her fault.   
As they crept down the hallway Emma was sure the infected could hear her heartbeat from miles away. Things were getting blurry and her throat had run dry.   
Melissa must’ve noticed, because she reached down to hold one of her hands.  
“This isn’t your fault,” she assured her. “Where did you put them?” She asked.  
“I put one of them in the lab,” she begun, pointing down the corridor at the sealed door. ”And I managed to get Paul in-“ she was cut off abruptly as Melissa slapped a hand over Emma’s mouth.   
“Listen!” She hissed.   
Somewhere within the bunker she could hear the distant chords of a song.  
The girl in the lab echoed him.   
Emma recognised the lyrics as the song they had chased her down with.   
“Emma, we want you to join the party,” the song wasn’t as upbeat as it first was. It was sung with a threatening undertone as he lurked somewhere nearby.   
Now her heart was racing for an entirely different reason. “Shit,” she cursed. She wanted to block her ears. “Go back this way. I know where we can hide.” They snuck through the corridors, Paul’s song masking their footsteps.   
Melissa was quiet and moved quickly, keeping her finger prepped on the trigger.   
Emma couldn’t stop herself cursing under her breath. She had to make a conscious effort to move her feet.   
She lead Melissa through the room they had first met in. She knew it had had a door off to the side that lead to a small storage room.   
The closer the music got the more she began to shake.   
“The hive needs to feed,” his voice was clear and nearby.   
Melissa was keeping a steady pace but they had to hurry. She reached out behind her to grab Melissa’s arm and accidentally collided with a shelf.  
It all happened within seconds, so fast Emma could barely comprehend it.  
The shelf shook and a ceramic vase fell from the top, shattering into a thousand pieces. It was so loud it hurt. Paul’s song stopped for a moment as she made shocked eye contact with Melissa. Paul’s song started again, much closer. He stood in the door way, his arms spread out in a welcoming gesture.   
She held on for as long as she could but her legs buckled and the blurriness was gave to darkness.   
She could only catch moments of the visions running through her head in whatever unconscious state she had entered. She felt like she was in the middle of a fever dream.   
She could hear voices shouting. Someone moved her and her stomach flipped over, she felt incredibly sick. When she woke up she was hunched over vomiting into the kitchen sink and she wasn’t sure how she’d gotten back there.   
Neither Melissa nor Paul were with her but she could hear talking nearby. She wasn’t well enough to make out words or voices.  
Her legs were still shaky and she eased herself back down to the cold, tile floor.   
She was missing someone, but couldn’t figure out who. Maybe Hidgens, or even Jane.   
She couldn’t keep her eyes open, but when she next awoke she lying down on the ground with Paul and Melissa looking down at her.  
Her first thought was whether or not they were infected but she knew she didn’t have the energy to escape if they were.   
“Ooh, there we go.” One of them placed a wet towel on her forehead. “She’s alright. Emma, are you with us?”   
“Unfortunately,” she remarked. “What’s going on?”   
“Well the good news is that we got Paul back!” Emma couldn’t read Melissa’s expression. While she was trying to sound excited her expression was something else entirely.  
“Sorry,” Paul frowned. “I didn’t mean to get lost in the song.”  
As feeling ebbed back into her body she could feel his hand around hers. She held it tighter. She wanted to cry, she had no words to describe the relief she felt now that he was okay again.   
“But the bad news is,” Melissa was hesitant to continue. She glimpsed over her shoulder at something outside the window. “You didn’t think about the consequences of bringing an infected in. Not that it’s your fault or anything!”   
Paul rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, grasping them tighter. “I can hear her, she’s been calling for help the whole time. The Hive knows what happened now. I’ve tried to tell them it’s all okay but they won’t listen!” He adjusted the towel on her head, wiping away the newly formed layer of sweat on her forehead.   
“Oh god,” when she sat up her world shook. “Once a fuck up, always a fuck up, that’s what my parents always said- not with their words though of course.”  
“Oh no, no,” Paul and Melissa chorused.   
“You aren’t a fuck up!” Melissa jumped in quickly.   
“You’re perfect, Emma!” Paul chimed in.   
Melissa elbowed him. “This isn’t even her fault, why didn’t you warn her!”   
Paul went pale, he held up his hands in defence. “I didn’t think about it either!”   
Melissa got to her feet and stretched her back. “Well we don’t have time to blame anyone. There’s about six of them. We’re pretty swarmed.”   
“I told them everything was fine! I even offered to let her out of the lab, but now they know you’re here!” Paul fretted, running his hands through his messy hair.   
“I’m sorry, Emma!”   
“Um, this is- this is okay. I can fix this.”  
Melissa cocked the shotgun, sneaking up to the window. “We’re lucky this place has an artillery as big as a Palace and walls as tall as um, yeah, a palace. This place is like a palace.” She tilted her head towards the kitchen table where she had gathered some more guns and even some knives.   
“Where did you find these?” Emma asked, her jaw dropping. “Hidgens would never show me where he hid them!”   
Melissa pointed up. “They were just on the top shelf of the cupboard.”   
“Are you kidding me?”   
Before Melissa could answer there was a violent thumping at the lab door.   
As if in reply, there was a just as loud knock at the front door.   
Emma armed herself with what she deemed to be the coolest looking knife in the pile, and Paul stood in front of her.   
Melissa moved to cover the front door, standing with her gun ready.   
The thumping came louder. The door was shaking on its hinges. Melissa appeared collected, but Emma could see her finger tighten around the trigger.   
The door was slammed once more and then everything fell silent. The girl in the lab stopped knocking as well.  
Emma grabbed onto the back of Paul’s coat, peering around him like he was some sort of impenetrable barrier that could keep her safe.   
Something clicked on the other side of the door and instead of bursting off its hinges, it creaked open.   
The figure in the doorway was tall and grinning widely with some sort of confidence only the Hive could provide.   
“Emma,” she recognised the voice immediately.   
Professor Hidgens.  
He brandished the key to his own front door proudly in hand, and the other infected came swarming around him, flooding the house with a perfect harmony.   
One of them pulled the gun from Melissa’s hand and she gasped in shock. The secretary had recognised the man who caught her.   
Two more infected parted ways from the mass to run towards the lab to free their kin.   
Emma recognised almost all of their faces. Ted, Bill, General Mcnamara, even Nora.   
Paul began to lose his stance, it started as a whisper underneath his breath but soon he was singing with them at full volume, belting out notes at the top of his lungs.   
Paul turned around to face her. This was the wrong Paul again. He took both of her wrists in a movement that almost seemed flirtatious. She dropped her knife on the floor.  
Melissa was shouting from where the man in the suit held her but Paul obscured her vision. That blue shit was leaking from his mouth again.   
She could hear the clack of Hidgens’ footsteps as he crossed the tile floor. He kicked her knife out of her reach.   
His presence demanded attention, and she looked up into his crazed eyes.   
Melissa’s cries grew worse.  
“I knew you’d come home.”


	5. Open the door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Melissa try to clean up the mess but they’re both so tired of fighting

“We’ve all been missing you so dearly,” Hidgens placed his hands on her shoulders. “Why have you been fighting so hard? You look so tired, you should let down your guard.”  
His touch made her blood run cold. “Shut up!” She demanded.  
“Now, don’t be unreasonable. That’s no way to talk to-“  
“Don’t even say it!” She warned. The knife lay just out of her reach, it glinted under the kitchen lights teasingly. “You aren’t Hidgens. Just like you-!” She stood on the tips of her toes to lean in to Paul. His eyes didn’t hold the same foreboding as the Professor’s. He looked like someone under a trance.  
“Just like you aren’t Paul! Neither of you would ever act like this!”  
A light chuckle washed through the onlookers.  
Hidgens and Paul exchanged charming smiles with each other. Their teeth were stained blue.  
Hidgens’ hands crept up and landed lightly around her neck at the same time Paul tightened his grip. “Would you like the honours?” Hidgens asked.  
Paul hadn’t been able to break free of the song. Even though everyone else had stopped to watch, he had not shut his mouth, and couldn’t reply to the question.  
“Don’t worry Emma, it’ll only hurt a little bit,” he leant down to whisper to her like she was a child getting her first injection.  
Balancing on her good leg, she reached out with the tip of her toe to the knife.  
She wasn’t close enough.  
Even if she could reach it with her foot she wouldn’t be able to pick it up while Paul had her hands. Even if she could, Melissa was right: she wouldn’t hurt Paul.  
Well, not seriously though at least.  
She readjusted her stance and drove her knee into Paul’s stomach. When he doubled over, she leant back and stomped on Hidgens’ foot.  
Paul stopped singing.  
She pulled herself free and dived down to pick up the knife on the floor.  
Pushing through the pain in her leg she shot back up again, narrowly dodging the professor’s hands as he recovered. She dodged through the crowd, finding Melissa in a brawl over her shotgun at the back of the room.  
“Mr. Davidson!” She called him. “Let go!”  
She had seen the man she was with before but had never met him before things turned south, so she showed no remorse or hesitance when she plunged her blade into his wrist.  
Blue blood sprayed from the wound, spattering her white shirt.  
They never had any vocal reaction to pain, only reflexes. The man in the suit let go of Melissa and pulled his bleeding hand close to his chest. He set his eyes on her instead, reaching out to grab her.  
She ushered Melissa out of there as soon as she could. She looked back into the chaos for any sign of Paul.  
“Not now!” Melissa pushed her on. “We can get Paul later! He’ll be fine!”  
“He better fucking be!”  
“Where are we going?!” Melissa shouted out above the song.  
“Uh-!” Emma’s eyes darted across the walls of the hallways as they ran. She racked her memory for the perfect room in this labyrinth of a home. It had to be somewhere with a lock and tough walls. She wanted lots of things for this perfect room- a back exit, a hiding spot, somewhere Hidgens didn’t even know about.  
She had to stop being unrealistic. Hidgens knew this place ten times better than she did. She missed having him on her side. She always thought the world was against her but this was a whole new level.  
Right now, all she had to do was put a wall between herself and those monsters.  
“The lab!”  
“But isn’t that girl in there?” They both lost their footing as they cut around the corner, losing fraction and colliding with the wall. They only lost a few seconds before they were running again.  
Emma cast a glance over her shoulder. The Hive was following but Paul was nowhere.  
“One of them is better than seven though!”  
Emma flew into the lab at such speed she crashed into the girl and knocked her off her feet. They both hit the ground in a tangle of limbs.  
Melissa raced to lock the lab door, it clicked shut just in time.  
The sound of singing was just outside.  
Melissa pressed her back to the door. She had a deathlike pallor.  
“Her!” Melissa couldn’t find the words to remind Emma of the infected they shared the room with.  
Emma yelled back in reply, sitting down on top of the girl to keep her pinned to the ground. “Got it!”  
“Now, whatever we have to do we’re going to have to do it quick!” Melissa stammered, shutting her eyes tight as the girl began to reply to the song outside.  
“Stop singing!” Emma wanted to hit her over the back of the head but kept her hands to herself.  
“Emma, look. I don’t know if you wanna tie her down or cure her or kill her but-“ there was a pounding at the door. “We have to hurry!”  
“I know! I’m looking for something!”  
“Here, here,” Melissa yanked a draw off its slides and onto the floor, spilling a collection of items onto the floor. “Rope! Get her hands tied!” She threw the rope over and continued to search the room for anything else. “First things first, let’s just deal with her and then find a way out and then we can come back for Paul. Do we really need Paul? Can we trust him? He keeps falling into that trance and!” She was cut off as another hand pounded against the door.  
“Oh fuuuck,” Emma finished tying up the girl’s hands and got to her feet, staring at the lab door. “We can’t catch a break.” She pulled the girl up off the floor into a sitting position.  
Melissa let out a triumphant noise. “I found a bat!” She raised it above her head, charging down towards their prisoner.  
“Woah, woah no! We are not bashing her head in!”  
“But if they’re communicating telepathically or whatever it is they’re doing then-!?”  
“No! Melissa! We aren’t crushing any skulls!”  
Melissa looked frustrated, she grappled the bat anxiously. “The only way I’ve survived this long is being armed to the brim with weapons and staying out of everyone’s way, Emma! We can’t trust her not to attack!”  
The girl watched the back and forth curiously, her eyes following their every movement.  
“We can’t trust anyone but each other right now! Not even Paul!” Melissa closed the distance between the two. She wiped blue blood off Emma’s cheek with her thumb.  
Emma could feel stress building inside her like a storm. She had never been responsible for anyone outside of herself before and this whole apocalypse had thrown her into the deep end of building relationships. She didn’t know how to reply.  
“Paul?” The girl interrupted. “Oh, we know Paul.” She gave a toothed grin, watching Emma’s expression twist into more discomfort. “He’s the youngest of our family, still a child.”  
“What do you want?” Emma spat. “This isn’t your conversation.”  
“Paul, he’s trying his hardest to fit in with us, but he doesn’t quite fit,” she continued. “We never invited him into the hive, not formally anyways.”  
Emma’s forehead creased. “Huh?”  
“Don’t listen to her, Em.”  
“No, no. Tell me what you mean by that!”  
“He may be able to hear our music but he cannot connect with us the way we do. It would be so easy for him to slip back out of the family if he wanted to badly enough.” She drew a circle on the floor with the tip of her shoe. “But I’m not supposed to tell you that, but it doesn’t matter now.”  
The storm inside her chest grew bigger. “Are you saying he isn’t infected?”  
“No, he’s infected. But not like me, not like the rest of the family. Soon, you two will be like us as well. We won’t make the same mistake we made with Paul.”  
“Why are you telling me this?”  
“Because they’re coming for you now.”  
She had lost track of Melissa during the girl’s spiel. She heard the ripping of duct tape and suddenly Melissa was pushing her out of the way to cover up the Greenpeace girl’s mouth.  
“We don’t want to hear what she has to say. We can’t trust her. She’s infected.”  
The girl glared at Melissa, her blue eyes wild with anger.  
“Emma! Emma, it’s me!” Paul’s voice came from the other side of the lab door.  
Melissa held a finger to her lips. “Don’t let him in!” She hissed. “They’re all out there, it’s a trick.”  
Emma moved silently to stand by the door.  
Someone pounded at the door.  
“Emma,” then it was Hidgens’ voice. “Let me in, everything is okay. No need to fret.”  
There were the voices of dozens of other people she knew, all calling for her to let them in, and Paul’s voice was lost in the noise.  
“It’s her! She’s doing it!” Melissa pointed to the girl they had tied up. “She’s talking to them with her mind or whatever! She’s calling for help!”  
Emma listened closely to the voices, pulling them all apart.  
There was Bill, pleading with her to be logical and open up. She could hear Ted, berating her for her lack of action. She could hear Nora’s threats and General McNamara’s show of power.  
Then, all in unison: “we know you’re in there.”  
The pressure inside her was reaching a breaking point.  
Behind her came a loud smack. She turned just in time to see Melissa bring the bat down on the girl’s head. The girl slumped over and hit the ground hard.  
Almost immediately after, the voices choked off. There was a flurry of footsteps down the hall as the infected fled, sensing the loss of their kin.  
“Emma, they’re gone. I promise.” Only Paul’s voice remained. “Are you okay? Open the door, please.”  
“Melissa, what do you think.”  
“I would say you shouldn’t, but I guess he means a lot to you,” She wielded the bar above her head again, prepping for a swing. She positioned herself next to the lab door. “You open it and I’ll cover you.”  
“Thank you, Melissa.”  
“But I swear to god, if I get locked out or infected or lost at any point, you better fight for me just as hard,” she smiled fondly, but the fatigue in her body was clear. “Are you ready?”  
Emma grasped the lock with one hand and her knife with the other. “Mhm, you?”  
Melissa nodded.  
Emma unlocked the door and pulled it open. Paul forced his way in and she slammed the door shut behind him.  
Without waiting to check for infection Melissa swung the bat directly into the mans head. It connected with a solid thunk.  
Paul stumbled and dropped to his knees. “Shit!” He cursed.  
Emma hadn’t ever heard him swear before. “Paul?”  
“It’s me, it’s me,” he held his hands up in defence. “Please don’t-“ he hadn’t quite figured out what had happened. Cautiously he swivelled his head to see what Melissa was holding. “Don’t hit me. I’m alone.”  
Melissa lowered the bat to the ground, wincing as Paul rubbed the back of his head.  
“Ouch,” he exhaled through his teeth. “God, that hurts. That’s going to bruise really bad.”  
Emma couldn’t pick up on any musical intonation in his voice. His eyes had calmed down too.  
“Paul?” Her voice was only above a whisper. “Oh my god, stop losing yourself like that!” She punched him in the stomach. “You scare the life out of me!”  
Paul let out a gurgled laugh. “You really hit hard.”  
Melissa grimaced at him. “What’s going on out there? Are they still there?”  
“No, no they all left. They don’t like it when someone goes silent,” he tilted his head in the direction of the unconscious girl on the floor. “It’s like part of your mind goes cold and numb. Its distant and scary. It’s the closest thing they feel to fear.”  
Paul rested his arm around Emma’s shoulders and Melissa knelt down to sit with them. She bit her lip and looked at Emma.  
“If we dealt with that, I’m sure we can deal with anything, Jesus Christ,” Emma was hit with a wave of tiredness and leant into Paul’s side. “I just hope we don’t have to.”  
Melissa lay down on the lab floor, putting her glasses aside. “Don’t even think about anything for the rest of the night. We can deal with everything tomorrow.” She shut her eyes and Emma was sure she was asleep within seconds.  
Paul lay down on the ground next to her and patted the space next to him. “Let’s rest.”  
“I thought you didn’t need to sleep?” She rested her head on his chest and he kept his arm around her to let her know she was safe.  
“I don’t feel tired, but I want you and Melissa to get some rest. I can keep watch. You can work on a cure tomorrow.”  
“I’m going to kick this apocalypse in the ass, I’m going to cure you, and Hidgens, and everyone else. Then we’re all going to be happy and Melissa won’t have to beat up everything that moves.”  
“Well, good for the both of you. Just don’t forget about me when you’re an international hero.”


	6. Seperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang make an unsettling discovery while working towards the cure.

Shortly after she fell asleep Paul had gotten up to stand guard. When she woke up, Emma found Melissa curled up by her side in his place.  
Her back ached from sleeping on the floor, and she didn’t feel rested at all.  
The blue blood stains on her shirt had their own glow to them, reminder her of their presence. She would have to get a new shirt as soon as possible, she didn’t want to risk any sort of cross-contamination.   
She watched the rise and fall of Melissa’s chest as she slept, her breath was warm on Emma’s neck.   
If it weren’t for the tiny vials of blue shit scattered around the room the lab would be pitch black. They were like fairy lights.  
In their blue glow, Emma could see Paul sitting by the door, he was quietly humming the lyrics to a song like some sort of lullaby.   
The Greenpeace girl sat with him, her arms still bound and her mouth still covered. She couldn’t quite make out the expression on her face. Her eyebrows were raised like she was laughing at him, she might even have been sneering at him. It was hard to tell when her mouth was covered.   
At the slightest movement Paul stopped humming, he turned around with a smile.   
“You’re up!” He whispered. “Did you sleep alright?”   
“As well as I could,” she rubbed her back. “Melissa is still asleep, don’t wake her up.”   
Paul helped Emma to her feet. “How’s your leg?”   
She nodded, “pretty shitty. I’m not complaining though.” They moves to sit by the door with their captive.   
She looked smug as ever despite her situation.   
“Hey, Paul? I want to ask you something.”   
“Anything,” while Emma had originally sat down next to Paul, he pulled her into his lap again and wrapped his hands around her waist. She could feel he was uncomfortable around the Greenpeace girl.  
“How did you uh,” she cast a meaningful glance at the vials and beakers on the table. “Get infected?”   
“Well I didn’t get my stomach ripped open if that’s what you’re wondering.”   
At this, their captive began to hum a more menacing tune. Occasionally her head twitched from one side to the other to go along with it.   
“Did it hurt? When they got you?”   
“No, but it felt strange.” He clearly didn’t like the line of questioning and was hesitant to answer. “Lots of people were welcomed into the Hive after a fight.”   
“Like how Nora and Zoey poisoned those guys at Beanies?”   
Paul nodded. “When we went to get Alice, she shot Bill.” He fiddled with her slim fingers as he spoke, curling them around his. She could tell he did not like that memory.  
Emma recoiled as the image forced itself into her head. “And Hidgen’s had his stomach- ugh,” she felt sick just thinking about it.   
“Well, I never died. It happened while I was alive. I got too close to the meteor, I breathed in the spores. No one put anything down my throat or tore me apart.”   
“Wow, it was that easy?” Her voice raised itself but she quickly brought it down, looking over to make sure Melissa was still asleep.   
The Greenpeace girl, a witness to the whole event nodded. She looked like she really wanted to say something.   
“The infection is in my body, but it isn’t in my blood, or my brain.”  
“So, is it limited or something? Will it clear up?”   
Paul shrugged. “I know you don’t like the Hive, and sometimes they can be a bit unreasonable but they’re family! I think we all at least try to be kind to you. Like, she didn’t kill you!” Paul pointed out, smiling at the captive.   
“Well firstly, that’s only because he had her tied up, and even then she called for help and everyone came down to the door and tried to get in. Secondly, the only reason they didn’t kill us was because Melissa whacked her over the head with that bat.”   
Paul looked like he didn’t want to admit it.   
“They broke in here, hell, even you went a bit crazy! Whenever they start a song we just lose you! You go feral.” She rolled her eyes. “Even when they stopped singing, you couldn’t.”   
Paul ran his fingers through his hair. “It just feels so good, I really can’t help myself. When I’m on my own I can control it but when all my friends are there its just too tempting.”   
“Well Melissa is about five seconds away from kicking you off the team, so we have to do something about that.”   
The girl was growing impatient.   
“Can you ask her what’s wrong? If she has anything to say can’t she just tell you with your Hivebrain or whatever?”   
Paul frowned. “Well, that’s the thing. Sometimes I try and talk to everyone and they ignore what I’m saying. When I tried to tell them not to chase you down they didn’t listen and I thought they were just ignoring me. But I’ve been trying to talk with her and she can’t hear me unless I say it out loud. Not to mention, I haven’t actually heard anything from her.”   
Emma tilted her head. “So what’s that mean?”   
“Dunno. I can hear them, but I guess they can’t hear me.”  
The girl let out a muffled sound of defeat, rolled her eyes and leant back against the wall. Content to give up for the time being.   
“Is it morning?” Melissa awoke with a start, looking around frantically for her companions. “Oh, there you are.” She wandered over to the trio, pressing her ear up against the lab door. “Do you think anyone is out there?”   
Paul shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything all night.”   
She creaked open the lab door and morning light streamed in, illuminating the room.   
“Don’t let the girl out,” Emma put in, rising to stretch her limbs out.   
Her back was killing her as they trod up the stairs, the other two following closely behind.   
“She hasn’t been calling for help. Radio silence.”   
“The kitchen is a mess,” Melissa sighed. There was a pile of blue blood on the floor where Melissa had been fighting. “That was our boss,” she mentioned. “He was the manager as CCRP, we weren’t too close but we got along pretty well. He even wanted to join the company softball league with me,” she placed her hands on her hips, looking at the puddle of blood intently as if it held the answers to everything. “You really did a number on him with that knife. You should probably wash it, I’ll get this mopped up.”   
“Oh, he kept his mops in the laundry. I’m just going to change my shirt first. I don’t want any of this on me.” She left the bloodied knife on the table.   
Hidgens’ bedroom was dirty as she expected it to be. The bed hadn’t been made and papers scattered the floor.   
There were pages from students Biology papers, small booklets labelled ‘Workin’ boys!’ And a small collection of sticky note reminders she remembered writing for him.   
‘Remember to buy groceries!’ Most of them said, written out in faulty pens. She usually ended up doing that for him.  
‘Don’t forget to shower before the meeting. It starts at 5:00!’ It was always so hard to pull him out of his study when he had his head in a project.   
She waded through the mess on the floor to his wardrobe, browsing through vintage jackets and unappealing, khaki dress pants. It was like the man only owned one set of clothes.  
Her fingers run across a simple white  
t-shirt. She had bought it for him when she caught onto the fact he had been wearing the same turtleneck all week.   
She pulled it off her hanger and unbuttoned her blouse. She had only seen him wear it once or twice on hot summer days but he had never thrown it out.   
Damn, she wished he wasn’t infected. Only one more reason to get working on that cure faster.   
When she burrowed into it, it was about twice her size and may as well have been a dress on her.   
She had to ball up the excess fabric and tie a knot in it for it to not look so ridiculous on her.   
At the front of his wardrobe was his lab coat that he wore to every lecture and seminar. She threw that on top of his shirt, it hung over her finger tips and trailed at her shoes but it made her feel more confident at finding a cure.  
Paul and Melissa smiled at her as she came back downstairs to take her blouse to the laundry room. “That’s nice,” Melissa commented. “Ready to play scientists today, Emma?”   
“Yep, ready to play guinea pig today, Paul?” She tossed her shirt in the laundry basket, moving back to the kitchen sink to wash the knife off very carefully.   
Paul gaped. “I thought that was what your hostage was for!”  
“Pfft, hostage, you make it sound like she isn’t an infected alien zombie monster.”   
She was exactly where they left her, sitting down on the floor of the lab but she was much more miserable than before.   
She wasn’t humming or tapping her feet, she didn’t even glare or sneer at any of them as they walked in.   
Emma rolled up the sleeves of Hidgens’ coat and yanked the tape off the girl’s mouth.   
She was sullen today, and didn’t have any information to share.   
“So, what do you want to try?” Melissa asked, keeping a wide berth between herself and the girl.   
Paul stood awkwardly on the other side of the room like he didn’t want to be included.   
Once, Emma and Jane went to a school excursion to a farm when they were seven. The chickens milled around the students as they are their lunch and Emma threw them some of her chicken sandwich, they ate it right up.   
Jane had given her the most shocked look in the world. “You can’t feed a chicken to a chicken!”   
It was a similar situation to pull Paul into finding a cure for the infection, so she was happy to leave him out.  
“Well I wanted to try keeping them isolated but that clearly doesn’t work considering they can speak to the Hive with their minds.” She shuffled through Hidgens’ papers, looking for anything in particular.   
“No,” the girl spoke up. There was a venomous tone to her voice today. “I can’t hear them now.”   
Emma dropped the papers. “You can’t what?!”   
“I can’t hear them, my head feels empty. Their voices are gone.”   
Emma skimmed through the papers. She wasn’t sure how it could happen so fast, she had only been silenced for a day.   
“When I woke up they had left me.”   
“Because I hit her in the head!” Melissa exclaimed excitedly, racing over to the bat left propped up against the wall and spinning towards Paul who backed up and crashed over a box of Bunsen burner trays.   
“No, Melissa!” She limped across the lab to stand between them. “We aren’t solving the apotheosis by smacking everyone upside the head!”  
Melissa dropped the bat in defeat. “What else can we do?”   
Paul lay on the floor for a moment longer, catching his breath.   
“Well I guess hitting her that hard must’ve done some damage.”   
The girl raised her head, her eyes were deep with loss. “My family, they won’t come for me now. We’ve lost each other.”   
Paul frowned. “I’m sorry. That must be so awful,” he got to his feet, avoiding Melissa like the plague, and pulled up a chair by the girl’s side. “I would explain what happened but Emma says I shouldn’t talk to them.”   
“They can’t hear you anyways. We’ve never been able to hear you, don’t you get it?”   
Paul raised one eyebrow. “Get what?”  
“You’re not really one of us. Enough time away from the Hive and the spores will clear up. That’s why you have no influence on us.”   
Paul’s jaw dropped. “No, I’m part of the family and they trust me.”   
“We were keeping you around! Once you went off with this Emma girl we knew we wouldn’t get you back. We all devised to use you to get to these two. I was going to invite them into the Hive but now I can’t do any of that.”   
Paul moved away from her, he hid behind Emma like she was some sort of shield. “I don’t think-“   
“We were so close to getting through that door to them. They tried to use you to get in, Paul. ‘Open the door. Get to Emma. Open the door. Get to Melissa.’ That was all that was going through my head before I lost them.” She clenched her fists and hung her head and grunted. “My head feels so empty without them! I need them back!” Her eyes were enraged. She stood up, glaring at Melissa. “You took my family away from me! I can’t live without them!” She charged, bolting across the room in a maddened craze.   
For the first time, Melissa was weapon-free.   
Paul made a move to protect his old co-worker, catching the girl before she could reach her.   
A heavy silence settled over the lab as everyone took the time to process the attack.   
The girl keeled over into her knees in despair and defeat. “My family...”  
“If we isolate her now, she won’t be able to talk to the Hive. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Paul was the first to speak.   
Melissa stood almost frozen, her hands shaking.   
Emma took slow, forced steps towards where Melissa left the duct tape. “Uh, for now. We can do that. But it isn’t the best cure.” Stiffly, she collected Hidgens’ papers and ripped a new piece of tape off the roll.   
They evacuated the lab after preparing the girl for her isolation.   
Melissa still couldn’t choke out a word.   
“It’s not a proper cure, even if it works. We can’t be hitting everyone we see. We still have to look for something.” Emma only spoke to fill the silence.   
Paul had a morbid look on his face. “I can’t imagine being separated from the Hive. Even if they might not be able to hear me, I can still hear them. I need that in my head. But she said I might just wake up and their voices won’t be there.”  
“Well that’s good Paul!” She shook his arm. “You’ll be clean of that stupid infection, we can be happy and everything’ll be okay! We just have to keep you away from the rest of the Hive.”   
“How long are you going to keep her there for?” Melissa spoke up, her eyes couldn’t focus on Emma and they kept drifting back to the lab.   
“I don’t know. Maybe a week? However long we have to.”   
Melissa nodded, wringing her hands. “She sounded super upset about her family. It must’ve been bad to lose them.”   
Emma reached out to Melissa. “Don’t feel bad for them, she tried to hurt you! She’s caused us more trouble than she’s worth.”  
Paul and Melissa were both looking at her like she was the monster here.   
“But to lose your family, it must really hurt. It’s just that I haven’t seen my own family since this all started and I know how and it feels.”   
Emma hated family talk. She didn’t want to be near her parents, she missed Jane with her whole heart and Hidgens, practically her father was hunting her down to infect her now. Nothing ever went right with family.   
“Melissa, please. Once she’s cured she’ll be so happy to be cut off from the Hive. It’s not a family it’s just a hive mind! Try not to think about it.”   
Paul tapped Emma’s shoulder, shaking his head. “Let’s not talk about the girl right now. We have better things to waste our time on.”   
“Yeah, I’m just going to catch up on some sleep. Uh, I’ll see you around dinner time.” Melissa exited the room in a hurry, an unspoken tension formed between the two.   
“Shit...” Emma watched her go. “Paul, do you wanna...?” She held up the papers in her hands. “I was going to go study these for a bit, do you want to keep me company?”   
“I will,” he nodded but didn’t sound very eager. He was probably still thinking about losing the Hive. She was sure he would come around eventually, he would have to.


	7. A painless invite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma seeks out fresh air and finds something much worse

Hidgens had probably the worst hand writing Emma had ever seen.   
“It’s just cursive,” Paul tried to tell her.   
“Well it gives me a headache to read.” She spread the papers out over the desk, squinting. “God, what can I do?”  
Paul was positioned by Emma’s side, watching her progress carefully.  
“Maybe we should get Melissa to hit Hidgens with that bat, so he can pull his head out of the Hive for a second to give me a hand.” She rested her head on the table and let out a sigh.   
Paul patted her on the back. “It’s alright, don’t worry.”   
“But I have to find this cure, the sooner the better.”  
“But what if you can’t find a cure?”   
“I will find a cure though!” She sat upright, grimacing at him. “I’m going to get Hidgens back, and I’m going to get you back and I’ll even get my stupid coworkers back.”   
He collected the papers, flicking through the professor’s note. “Um, but Emma we don’t really want to leave the Hive. That’s our family.”   
“You do! You just can’t tell. You’re biased.”   
“But I’m happier than I was before! You don’t understand it, you haven’t experienced both sides! I have and maybe you should just try it!” Paul held out his hands pleadingly, going as far as to lay one around Emma’s neck.   
She pushed him back, shooting up from her chair. “We didn’t fight this hard to get out of Hatchetfield for you to tell me it was all okay! I didn’t get-!” She pushed back the swivel chair, gesturing to her bad leg. “I didn’t fall from a helicopter and get impaled on a damn rebar for you to do a complete 360!” She gathered the papers up, holding them close to her chest. “Paul, are you on my side or not?”   
Paul was wide-eyed and tugging at his sleeves, “I-I-“ he stammered. “Emma it isn’t like that!”   
“Whether you like it or not you’ll be clean soon, and I’m going to fix everyone else as well!”  
Paul tried to block her from exiting.   
He wasn’t the Paul who tipped her and ordered the same drink everyday at Beanies. More clear now than ever this was an imposter. This wasn’t her Paul, even if she could see flashes of himself under his happy-go-lucky Hive bullshit he had still been infected.   
“Emma, you’re stressed, you’re so tired. You aren’t thinking quite straight.”   
“I slept fine! I’m not stressed I’m just busy, I just have a lot on my shoulders right now. Get out of my way, I have to get some fresh air.”   
“Uh, o-okay. Just to the kitchen? Or to see Melissa?” He stumbled out of the doorframe, tailing her down the hallway. He let out a strangled cry when she picked up the knife from the kitchen table.   
“Are you going out?”   
“I don’t know, maybe. I just need some space.” A day ago Paul and Melissa ate up her every move like she was some sort of idol incapable of wrong, the idea that they were starting to think otherwise frightened her. She wanted to isolate herself from them so she could get back in her own headset. She was independent, she never used to care what people thought of her. The bunker was getting to her head, she just need to stretch her legs.   
“Emma I thought you didn’t want to join the Hive!” He bounded back down the hallway to stop her getting to the front door.   
“I don’t!”   
“But if you go out there alone! Maybe you should just take a nap instead. Emma, please!”  
“I’m just going to go clear my head. I’ll only walk around the house, I’ll be absolutely fine. Move, please Paul.”   
Paul couldn’t find the words to argue, a note slipped out of his mouth but he quickly shut the song down by slapping his hands over his mouth.   
“Just do me a favour and keep an eye on the girl in the lab. Make sure she doesn’t get out.” She squeezed past him, pushing the front door open cautiously.   
As she shut the door behind her she could her a flustered Paul calling out for Melissa’s help.   
It wasn’t like the island was overwhelmed with them. On the way to the lab she only saw one group of them. It would be safe to make a lap of the house.   
The air was cold and clouded out in front of her when she breathed out. She could already feel the fresh air bringing her back to earth.   
She was sure Paul was speaking from the Hive and not from the heart. He hated musicals, that was his whole thing. A Paul who liked musicals was an entirely different Paul! He would feel much better after the infection starved away and he was normal old Paul.   
The thought of ten years in the future brought her peace. By then she surely would’ve cured everyone, if not, at least Paul would be better. They would be able to laugh at it: ‘can you believe you ever wanted to stay in the Hive?’ And his face would go red and she would laugh until her sides hurt.   
She ran her fingers along the cool handle of the blade. Everything would be okay.   
Hidgens never tended to his garden very well, the overgrown grass reached her knees at some parts of the back garden.   
When he was better she would give him a hand. She would tell him she missed him, and maybe even as a joke she would call him ‘dad,’ just as a way to thank him for everything.   
“Oh, that’d be funny,” she chuckled to herself. “He’d get a laugh out of that.”   
She was outside the lab now and started listening closely just incase there was anything serious going on. She reached a more secluded area of the garden and wandered over to sit down on a damp wooden bench. It was better not to think about anything right now, even if Paul decided to return to the Hive last minute she still had Melissa by her side. Melissa would probably wake up in a better mood than this morning and everything would return to normal.   
Yes, that’s right. Things will all be okay.   
Time to suppress that problem and move onto the next. It was time to think of a possible cure.  
Her fingers were beginning to numb out in the cold but it was a pleasant feeling after being inside for three days straight.   
“Alright. A cure. All I need right now is an idea,” she told herself, hoping the reinforcement would work. She didn’t know enough about Biology to do this on her own, she was studying Botany! Sure, she could probably come up with a cure for an infected plant, sure, but an infected human was a whole other idea.   
“Oh come on,” she racked her head for an idea. If isolation didn’t work out she wasn’t sure what to try next. Maybe if she could get them to stop singing there would be a breaking point where the spores would just die off from starvation.   
“Hidgens, if anyone was meant to be the survivor of this apocalypse it was meant to be you. I wish you could be here now.”   
“Well, then why didn’t you just say so?”   
She could feel her jaw drop as the Professor emerged from around the corner of the house.   
“Emma, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”   
Emma tightened her grip on the knife. “Stay back, I won’t hesitate!” She threatened him, hoping it wouldn’t come to that.   
“Oh I know. We all saw what you did to poor Mr. Davidson. We haven’t been too happy about that, my dear.” He had his hands in his pockets like he was just out on a casual morning stroll.   
“What are you doing here?” She pointed the knife at him, taking two steps back for every step he took towards her.   
“I’m looking out for you, of course.”   
Emma stumbled on something concealed by the tall grass. “What sort of bullshit answer is that!”  
Hidgens laughed, his deep voice used to be comforting but now it sounded sinister.   
“Well this is my home, I’m not too happy to be forced out of it. I was planning on staying until what happened last night.”  
“What? When Melissa hit that girl so hard she lost connection to the Hive?”   
“Exactly, Emma. While we can’t hear her anymore we can still feel her within these walls. The family requests that I get her back. I wasn’t going to bother you, I was going to walk in while you were asleep, grab her and leave.”   
Emma had reached the wall of the garden, she prepped her knife as Hidgens continued to stroll closer.   
“We’ve heard you’re working on a cure of sorts. That’s what I wanted to do too until I realised that the Hive is not the problem, but humanity itself!”   
“Who cares! Once I find out how to fix you, you’ll see that the Hive was wrong.”   
Hidgens dipped his head, smiling fondly. “The Hive isn’t very happy with you, Emma. They don’t like that you’ve taken Paul, and that you’re cutting off members from the Hive, and that you’re attacking them.” He was close enough now to touch the end of her knife if he wanted. “They don’t like to hear that sort of news.”   
“And?”   
“They plan to act on that. They want you to join us. They recognise how powerful and resourceful you are. We want you to join the family.”   
“I’m not going to.”   
Hidgens poked the end of the blade with his fingertip as if to say ‘I know you won’t hurt me.’ “What I’m offering you now is your best choice. The Hive is going to come for you two with all it has. They won’t worry about hurting you, they’ll shout you, they’ll tear you apart limb from limb, they’ll do anything to get inside you,” He spoke with a dramatic flourish.   
Emma couldn’t tell if he was being overdramatic or dead serious. She pressed up tightly against the garden wall to put any extra inch of distance between them. She felt frozen.   
“If you and your friend step down now I’ll offer you a painless invite.” He pushed the knife down by her side and in one large stride he was standing right in front of her.   
He rested his hands on her shoulders, smiling in a counterfeit of comfort.   
“What do you say, Emma?”


	8. The choice is yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The good news is that they have their first step towards a cure, the bad news is that that might not matter if the Hive finds out.

Her first reaction was to seriously consider it. No matter who you are, the idea of being torn apart isn’t a good one. Despite the cold her whole body broke out in a hot sweat. She opened her mouth to answer but nothing came out.   
“That’s alright, Emma. You can take your time. You have had enough fun playing hero but I think it’s just about time to step down.” He adjusted the collar of the lab coat she was still wearing and his lip tugged up in a fond smile. “It’s a bit big on you, wouldn’t you agree? I’m sure we could get you something better.”   
”Um,” she begun, her eyes dropping down to the ground. “Didn’t it hurt to have your guts ripped out?” She pushed his hands off her shoulders and placed her fingertips lightly on his stomach, half expecting to feel his insides under his jacket.   
“What a good reason to consider my offer then.” He unbuttoned his jacket and lifted up his turtleneck. Where a gaping hole should’ve been was only skin, not even scar tissue. “Now I’m completely fine. Can you think of any reason not to join the Hive?” He asked eventually, letting her stare for a moment.   
“Yeah! You lose all individuality, you have to dance and sing all the time, you kill people.”   
“Well we’re having this conversation right now aren’t we? You could join me and Paul. The whole family.”   
Emma side-stepped out of Hidgens’ way so she could run if she had to. “I won’t join the Hive. Not now, not ever. I’d rather be dead!”   
“Well that might just end up being the case,” he lost his smile as if he had run out of patience.   
She readied herself to fight.   
That’s not Hidgens, she told herself. If you stab him you aren’t really stabbing him.   
Her breaths shortened and she raised the knife above her head, bringing it down on nothing but air.   
The professor had already moved out of her way while she was psyching herself up.   
“Did you get it all out of your system?” He had a patronising tone. “I’d be more careful with that knife, I’m not sure you know how to use it.”  
“Just get out of here!” She growled, raising it again.  
“I see how it is. You can deny my offer but the Hive is coming for you and your friend. It would be such a shame if they weren’t careful with you, I really am looking forward to seeing you on our side.” He turned around nonchalantly, pacing out of the garden. “I’ll return only once to check on you tonight. If you haven’t changed your mind by then, best of luck.”   
The second he was out of sight Paul and Melissa came skidding around the corner, the latter with what seemed like a whole arsenal in her hands.   
“Emma! Oh my god, here you are!” She cried, dropping her weapons and throwing her arms around the shorter girl. “I can’t believe you would go outside! I thought Paul was joking!”  
“No, no, I’m fine. Everything’s okay,” she pulled away from Melissa, helping her pick her bat and her gun up off the ground. “We should probably get back inside, fast.” She lead the way in silence, deep in thought until they returned to the safety of indoors.   
“You’re looking pretty pale again,” Melissa commented, taking a seat at the kitchen table.  
Paul had been curiously silent, he was loitering by the front door.  
“You aren’t feeling sick again are you? I haven’t been doing too well myself really, but I don’t think we’ve eaten a proper meal for a while. Soup doesn’t really cut it,” Melissa watched Emma pace back and forth by the windows.   
She couldn’t tear her eyes away. She was half expecting to see a hoard of infected marching down the street, chanting her name. “I don’t think we’re safe here anymore. They know we’re here.”   
Paul raised his hand as if he had to ask to speak. “Can you tell us what happened?”   
“What do you mean?”   
He eyed Melissa cautiously, wondering if he was allowed to speak in her presence. “Uh, I know what happened outside, are you not telling us for a reason? Is it a secret? I could feel...” he gestured to his head. “He was out there, where you were. Did you talk?”   
Her shoulders fell. “It’s okay, you can say his name. It’s not supposed to be a secret.”   
“Professor Hidgens. He told me he was ‘paying a visit.’ Did you run into him?”   
Emma nodded but didn’t tear her gaze away from the windows. “Yeah, I saw Hidgens. We spoke for a bit. Now that the Hive knows we’re still alive they’re kinda pissed. They’re coming for us.”   
Melissa’s eyes widened. “They’re what?”   
“Hidgens said they’re gonna like,” she made a violent gesture with her hands. “Tear us apart and shoot us and, uh,” something rose in her throat and she pushed it back down. “I just need some water.”   
All colour drained from Melissa’s face. “I’m sorry, they’re going to do what now?”   
She turned on the tap, holding a glass underneath to the point the water started running over the edges and dampening the sleeves of her lab coat. “No, don’t worry. I have a plan already,” she lied, if only to comfort her friend.   
Melissa looked up at her hopefully. “You do?”   
“Well here’s the gist of what Hidgens told me. The Hive is coming to infect us because they’re pretty fucking mad that I axed your boss and you smashed that girl so hard her head stopped working right. But Hidgens says he’s going to come over tonight and offer us like, a plea deal or whatever you call it. He’s going to infect us without killing us. So my plan is this,” she paused to gulp down her water, her hesitance was practically killing Melissa.   
“When Hidgens comes, you just hit him over the head with your bat again.”   
Paul clicked his tongue, rubbing his chin with a dumbfounded look on his face. “Emma, I want to support you here but I don’t think you’re hearing yourself.”   
“Emma, and I love you too, but they’re going to kill us for hitting that girl with the bat so your plan is to just!” Melissa threw her hands up in the air, shocked. “Hit someone else with the bat!?”   
“Exactly.”   
Melissa stood up and charged across the room to Emma. “The girl was so upset about being cut off from the Hive she tried to kill me. That was just last night Emma, do you remember that?”   
“Yeah but Hidgens is less likely to kill me, right? Like he knows me pretty well.”   
Paul came to stand by Emma, hugging her from behind. “Em, I don’t know what to say. That just sounds like a very, very bad plan.”   
“No it’s a great plan, right? If we disconnect Hidgens from the Hive then he can’t talk with them anymore.”   
“And?”   
“Uh...” she blinked. “Well, you know.”   
Melissa shook her head.   
Paul patted her on the back. “It was a nice try. Maybe you should just take the easy way out.”   
Emma didn’t bother scolding Paul for it at this point. “Well if Hidgens doesn’t have the Hive constantly persuading him to like, sing and dance and shit, maybe he can help me with a cure!”   
Paul bit his lip, Melissa didn’t look confident either.   
“Just trust me. It’s literally the only plan I have right now.”   
Melissa squinted. “Not comforting, Em.”   
“It’ll stop him from infecting us on the spot though right?” The idea of assaulting him wasn’t one she was comfortable with at all but if it meant fighting off the infection for another day then she didn’t have much of a choice. “I just want to be clear for a second Melissa, I know Paul’s on an entirely different page but the goal is to not get infected right? We aren’t gonna take him up on the offer are we?” She set her cup down and gestured down the hallway to the lab so the others would follow her while she spoke. “We should check on the girl.”  
“I’d prefer taking him up on it than getting executed if I’m honest.”   
“Not what I wanted to hear but I can work with that,” she held her ear to the lab door to listen for any out of place noises before opening it.   
From what she had seen of Paul, those infected by the meteor didn’t need sleep but the girl was sprawled out on the floor with her eyes shut.   
“Oh my god, is she dead?” Melissa gaped, paralysed with shock, clinging to Emma’s arm.  
Paul stood with his mouth open, surprised.   
Emma crouched down to feel the girl’s pulse. “She’s alive,” she confirmed.   
Paul placed his hands on his temple like he was having a migraine. “I don’t feel her in the Hive. This was different than before. She’s definitely not here.”   
“Does that mean...?”   
Emma tore the duct tape off the girl’s mouth and unbound her hands, waiting a moment for any reaction. “She’s out cold.”   
Paul leant over to feel her forehead. “Uh oh.” He began humming to her, mumbling some lyrics to the same lullaby he was singing to her this morning.   
She didn’t reply.   
“Help me get her upstairs to the bed, quick!” Emma ordered.   
Paul scooped her up, carrying her gently up the stairs.  
“Is she clean?” Melissa whispered  
“I don’t know!” Emma hissed back, she didn’t want her hopes to be crushed so quickly. “Maybe! Maybe though!”   
They climbed the stairs to the guest bedroom in a tight huddle, the two girls fighting to see their captive.   
Paul laid her down on the guest bed, checking her temperature again. “I’ll get her a wet towel and some bread.”   
Emma was bouncing excitedly on the tips of her toes. “Maybe it worked!”  
“What if she’s like, braindead now or something? What if she’s in a coma?”   
“Yeah, hitting people over the head isn’t the best way to cure everyone, but never underestimate the power of hitting something until it works.”  
Melissa gritted her teeth. “I’m pretty good at softball but I hope we don’t have to resort to that.”   
It was hard to take their eyes of the girl in the bed. While it was barbaric, if this worked it was the first step towards a cure.   
All they had left to do for now was wait to see if she woke up, and wait for Hidgens to visit.


	9. Fading

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melissa won’t take any risks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter hurt to write which is why it’s shorter and worse & I might upload the next chapter sooner bc I don’t like to leave it at this point

At exactly eleven o’ clock a key slid into the front door and clicked open.  
Without waiting for any sort of invite Hidgens strolled in, calling out a greeting to the anxious bystanders. “I’m home!” He pulled up his own seat at the kitchen table, smiling at Paul who had been standing guard by the front door.  
“Ah! Emma, there you are,” he patted the seat next to him as she crept down the stairs from the guest bedroom.  
“Sit down then, let’s get this show on the road. You don’t have much time left now before you get what you’re owed.” He spoke with an unsteady intonation like he was on the verge of breaking into song.  
“Paul, get out of here,” Emma didn’t really want him to leave. It felt much safer to know where he was rather than have him off in the house somewhere but she didn’t want to take any risks. If Hidgens begun to sing Paul would get sucked into the Hive again and it would take time she didn’t have to get him back to his ‘normal’ self.  
Paul scurried out of the room, casting a nervous glance back at Emma before he left, presumably to check on the girl upstairs.  
“I don’t want to waste your precious time. Did you come to a decision? Are you going to play the hero for a bit longer or join me?”  
Emma steadied her breathing. It was uncomfortable to her on some visceral level that he was here right now. She had watched in complete horror when he was torn open by the Hive, but it was even scarier for her to have him tell her everything was fine, and that the Hive was incredible. It was almost more concerning than the fact they were planning an ambush on her as they spoke.  
But everything was okay. Paul was going to stick nearby just incase things got dangerous, and Melissa was already hidden away with her bat, ready to catch the Professor off guard.  
She had the easiest part: just stall him until everything was ready.  
“I had a few questions first actually.”  
“Oh! Incredible, do go ahead.” He straightened his back and gave her his full attention. He made the same face as when a student had a question during one of his lectures.  
“If I were to join the Hive what would you say I should be watching out for?”  
He laughed out loud at this, it was a deep bellowing laugh that would’ve made her laugh too under any different circumstances. “I know exactly what you’re trying, Emma, but here’s an answer for you: as of right now, the biggest threat to us is you and your friend, what’s her name?”  
“Why does that matter?”  
He shrugged, fixing the sleeves of his jacket and his collar that had been ruffled from his laughing. “Doesn’t matter if you don’t tell me. We’ll find out soon enough. Any other questions, dear?”  
Emma shifted in her seat, preparing to run if she had to but something drew her back and kept her in her seat. “Yeah, I have lots of questions still.”  
“Well Emma, I’d love to answer them all but we - and definitely you- don’t have all night.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Well what do you think the Hive has to wait for?”  
A string of expletives ran through Emma’s head. “They’re coming tonight?”  
“When else would they?” He put one hand on hers. “Are you really going to risk it when you could just come with me?”  
That was the moment Melissa chose to strike. She saw her burst out from her hiding spot in a blur of colour and her bat hit the back of Hidgens’ head so hard that the wood splintered and he fell out of his chair.  
“God I sure hope I hit him in the right place!” Melissa gasped, dropping the bat.  
“Ah shit,” Emma had to remove herself from the scene. Now that the rush was over, reality was sinking in. “We are so fucking dead. Paul? Where’s Paul?”  
Paul came at the call of his name, instinctively wrapping his arms around his companion. “Are you alright?”  
“Yeah I’m just,” she turned back to catch a glimpse of Hidgens’ limp body, she quickly turned away. “Oh fuck, that’s bad.”  
“So what’s the rest of your plan now Emma?” Melissa checked the professor’s pulse.  
“We gotta get out of here as soon as we can. The second the Hive finds out Hidgens isn’t with them they’re gonna ram that door down and rip our fucking heads off.”  
Melissa slipped her back under the professor’s arm and pulled him up. Emma took his other arm and they held him up between the two of them.  
“Wow, just like in weekend at Bernie’s,” Melissa chirped in an optimistic tune that was probably driven by pure fear at this point.  
“Oh, I know that film!” Paul added.  
“What, the one where those two guys drag that dead man around and pretend he’s like, not dead?” Emma questioned.  
“You think we should just go out there and puppet his body around and say ‘yeah, call off the attack it’s all good!’ And they’ll just go away? Fucking fantastic. Best idea yet,” she huffed. The fact Hidgens was almost two heads taller than her didn’t help her panic. “Paul, go get the girl. We don’t have time to get anything we just have to go! He said the Hive is already on its way.”  
Paul nodded and darted up the stairs without hesitation.  
“Where are we going?” Melissa helped her drag the man to the door.  
“As far away from here as we can. We just have to put some distance between us and everyone else. Hidgens had a car, look!” She reached inside his coat pocket for his key ring. Her hands were shaking so much she could barely hold them. “We can take it for now! Let’s go, come on!”  
“But what about Paul? He can’t come with us.”  
“What do you mean?” It was hard to talk with Hidgens’ body propped up between the two. “Of course he can come!”  
“No, like, that’s what everyone has been saying. The Hive can feel where it’s other members are. They’re all interconnected! Even if Paul isn’t one-hundred percent infected they can probably still find him. If he comes they‘ll find us!”  
Emma unlocked the garage door with her free hand, easing her professor through and out to the car. “No, don’t be ridiculous. We have to take Paul.”  
They managed to get him into the back seat without too much struggle, but they still had to fit the other girl. Emma hopped into the passenger seat, she’d hated driving ever since her sister passed. “Come on, get in. We have to leave as soon as Paul gets here.” She scanned Hidgens’ body for any signs of severe damage.  
Paul returned to them, and despite the girl’s smaller figure he still fought to get her in the backseat properly.  
“Emma, get in. I’ll talk with Paul.”  
“No- I! We can’t, he’s important!”  
“Paul,” Melissa begun, closing Emma’s car door. Their voices became muffled and she couldn’t make out as much but she could see them in the rear view mirrors.  
Their expressions went beyond their usual sibling-rivalry type fights. They both looked genuinely distressed and upset and Melissa’s hands were clutched so tightly around her shotgun her knuckles went white. As their talk progressed her knees grew shaky and she had started to raise her voice.  
“You’ll get me and Emma killed!”  
“But!”  
“No! If they can follow you we can’t risk it!” Melissa’s voice dropped again and she turned her back on Paul. She looked so sorry, her eyes were glassy with tears.  
Paul was still, his complexion was pale but there was understanding in his eyes. He didn’t argue as Melissa hopped into the front seat.  
“Paul? We aren’t really leaving him behind are we?” She turned in her seat, bending her neck to see him better on the other side of the window.  
“Emma, seatbelts.”  
“No! Aren’t you just joking? We can’t leave him behind.”  
Melissa pushed the key into the ignition and the car roared to life. “It’s bad enough we’re taking the professor. The Hive can probably still feel where he is. It’s okay though, we’ll just drive around for a bit and then he’ll be okay, just like the other girl. Hopefully.”  
“Melissa I’m not kidding, don’t drive away. We have to bring him too! We can’t leave him!” She tried to open the car door but Melissa had locked it already.  
“The Hive won’t hurt him. We both know that. I know you don’t want to leave him behind but we could die if we bring him with us.” The car began to move.  
“Stop it!” Emma yelled. “Stop driving! He’s almost cured! The girl said he was almost cured!” She screamed, feeling her whole body burn up. She felt sick. She couldn’t do this without Paul.  
Melissa’s expression hardened. “You’re the last person I have left, I’m not going to let you die, Emma.”  
In the rear view mirror, Emma could see Paul’s hopeless face as they sped down the street.


	10. Make me wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melissa and Emma have to continue on their way without Paul, but have they really given up on each other?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to make things better for my heart after that last chapter oough

They drove until they were out of gas and Emma cried and fought and struggled until she was out of energy. She didn’t remember falling asleep but when she opened her eyes she could see the indigo night sky outside the car.  
They had ran out of fuel close enough to a gas station, and the flickering neon lights in the window shed a ghostly blue light onto the road.   
Her feet were numb and her neck was aching from sleeping in the car. She could feel where her tears had dried on her face and her eyes were still sore.   
She eased herself out of her sleeping position and into a proper sitting-up position. Her back cracked and she grunted as she tried to stretch out the rest of her body.  
To her right, Melissa was asleep with her head in her arms on the dashboard. Her glasses were still on and her gun was in her lap.  
She could hear the gentle breathing of their two passengers behind her.   
Hidgens was going to be out cold for a while, but the girl had been muttering in her sleep occasionally.   
She glanced out the window into nothing but darkness. She partially expected to see Paul somewhere nearby, and the hollow feeling in her chest worsened when she didn’t.   
She cracked open the car door, stepping out just to stretch her legs and get some cool air.   
The town was absolutely silent. This was the eye of the storm. The Hive was no longer scattered, surely they were all together somewhere plotting her downfall.   
It made her tense and anxious to keep moving, but the further they drove the further they left Paul behind.   
She tried to get her bearings. If she wasn’t too far from home she could go back and get him herself. If he was with her Melissa couldn’t turn him away a second time.   
An angry feeling boiled in her stomach when she thought of Melissa. Melissa should’ve let Paul come with them, he was part of their team! He was with her before Melissa was, and Melissa was with him long before Emma and Paul even formally met.   
Paul could hear what the Hive were saying, he was their greatest chance at reasoning with the them.   
They used to be a powerful trio: Paul as their invincible yet danger-prone body guard, Melissa as their energetic, hopeful ‘weapons expert’ and herself as their determined leader so close to finding a cure.  
They were nothing like that now. Now their ‘all powerful post apocalyptic team’ was an unconscious old man, a risk-free secretary, a downright miserable barista and some girl from Greenpeace.   
Without Paul everything fell apart.   
Careful as to not wake Melissa, she grabbed the gun off her lap and scanned the gas station for any signs of movement before limping off towards it. She could find something good in there.   
Her leg was hurting worse than usual after carrying Hidgens out to the car and then proceeding to sleep in it for several hours.   
The lights in the gas station were still on as if nothing had ever gone wrong. There was still a little jingle playing over the radio, hearing music made her skin crawl.  
It was a reasonably small service station, but it had a break room and a bathroom and fully stocked shelves- she couldn’t complain.   
She practically pillaged the store: robbing it of anything she saw as important while making a mess of it in the process.   
In such close proximity it was better not to start a fight with Melissa but that didn’t suppress her burning desire to punch and kick something until she couldn’t anymore and the poor magazine rack was her victim.   
Eventually her rampage came to an end, she had gathered a basket of supplies, thoroughly ripped apart the magazine rack and everything on it, and had grown tired again.   
She heaved the basket back to the car and emptied it into the boot, save for a few bottles of water and snacks she was going to make a dinner out of.   
The sound of the car door shutting roused Melissa from her rest.   
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing out of her mouth. Her eyes were big and round and sympathetic.   
“It’s fine,” Emma lied, breathing in and holding her breath to stop herself crying again. She passed a bottle of water to Melissa and for a moment all they did was drink in silence.   
“I know you’re upset, you were crying out for him in your sleep. But you know it’s for the best, he’s-“  
“I get it, Melissa.” They spoke in hushed voices to avoid waking either of the people in the backseat. “I know why you had to do it, I probably could’ve thrown less of a rampage about it. That didn’t help either of us.” She fished around in the pile of snacks at her feet and pulled up some sort of cheese-biscuit snack, offering one to her friend. Usually she would find this stuff disgusting, even for a college student with little to no choice like herself but this was not the case. For Melissa, who had been living off scavenged food for the past two weeks and for Emma who had been living it up with the joys of hospital food these shitty cheese biscuits were godsend. All the food was devoured in two minutes flat.   
“What now?” Emma asked, checking on the Greenpeace girl in the back.   
“Uh, what do you think?”   
Emma had resigned her position as unspoken leader the moment they left Paul behind. Or maybe not so much resigned, but usurped by Melissa. The detachment in her eyes must’ve clued her on because Melissa began to lay out a plan. “We should get some more fuel, then I suppose find somewhere safe we can stay. I’m thinking an apartment block. We can stay somewhere up high, there’ll be plenty of exits and fire escapes too. Plenty more room than in the bunker. We don’t have any weapons left now, only the last few bullets in this gun.”   
Emma nodded, she preferred having someone do the thinking for her this late at night.   
“Sit tight and I’ll go fuel up,” Melissa put a hand on Emma’s knee, giving her a sincere look. “We’ll be okay.”  
As Melissa got out of the car Emma turned to check on the girl again. She jostled her but she didn’t show many signs of waking up. The twitch of her shut eyes suggested she wasn’t dead at least.   
She sighed. If she wasn’t up within a couple of days they were going to leave her for the Hive. They didn’t have time to pull a coma patient around with them.   
But if the same happened to Hidgens she didn’t know if she could.   
Things weren’t really going the best.   
“Ready to ride?” Melissa asked pointlessly as she got back into her seat. “Nice that we don’t have to pay,” she tried to joke.   
“Hah, sure,” she forced a laugh. “I can drive for a bit if you want, if you’re tired,” not that she really trusted her driving skills, she hadn’t driven in a while now.   
“No, it’s okay. You have a bad leg.”   
“No, no, I can drive,” she put her hand on the handle to get out of the car. “You look tired, I’ll drive.”   
Melissa locked the car doors from her side again. “No, maybe we’ll just rest for a bit. Better now than later, we don’t know where we’re going.” She reclined the seat until it bumped into the girl’s knees behind her. She stared at the ceiling of the car with such hopelessness it made Emma concerned. She didn’t look like she had the energy to go on any further.   
“Okay, you catch some rest then. I’ll keep an eye out.” The Hive could be anywhere, without Paul they would have to return to taking shifts. “I’ll watch from outside.” After getting a half-hearted thumbs up from Melissa she hopped out to patrol the streets.   
They were dead silent. She walked to the end of the block and back again. The cold of the night numbed her bare legs enough for any pain to become minuscule. She was too in her thoughts to feel much anyways.   
Paul was probably fine, hopefully. The Hive would leave him alone if he was part of them. They always went on about that ‘family’ nonsense, they wouldn’t hurt him.   
Except for the fact that he was growing less and less like one of them everyday, maybe they would infect him all over again.  
No, she couldn’t think like that. Paul would be fine. He would be alive.  
She continued her patrol down the block.  
She couldn’t stop thinking about him.  
Walking a little bit faster now.  
Every thought always lead back to him.   
Hurrying.   
She couldn’t get him out of her mind.  
Running, sprinting.  
He consumed her every thought.   
Then she could feel the pain in her leg again. It was grounding, it made her stop thinking about him. To test, she placed a finger on the bandages and poked at the skin. It was still raw and hurt like hell. That was not going to recover anytime soon.  
She looked up to see how far she had run. All the lights in the shops were off, she felt like the only person in the whole world- until she saw him.   
It was a shaky figure, shrouded in darkness at the end of the next street.   
She squinted, unsure if she was seeing right.   
The figure saw her and stopped in its tracks.   
The shadow was just tall enough, just familiar enough, it was just right.  
“Paul?” She held her hands to her mouth. “Is that you?!”   
She didn’t want him to answer, to ruin the moment of elation she was in. If it was him she couldn’t have it ruined by a stray note or something worse.   
He moved closer and now she could see him. It really was him, she felt faint and he moved to catch her before she fell.   
“Paul?!” She asked again, gripping onto him to regain her balance. Her head felt light. “How did you follow us?!”  
“I followed Hidgens,” he answered, he was smiling as wide as she was. “He’s faint in the Hive now, but I can still feel him.”   
She leant into his chest, wrapping her arms around him so they couldn’t be separated.   
“I can’t stay. I can’t put you in danger. I just had to make sure you made it to wherever you were going safely.”   
“Please stay,” she begged. “You’re almost cured, you’re almost normal again.”   
Paul chuckled and shrugged. “You don’t know that. Melissa was right, I can’t put either of you in danger. Where is she, anyways?”   
Emma’s reply was muffled by Paul’s jacket but he managed to hear her regardless.   
“I’ll help you back, but I really can’t stay.”   
“Yes you can,” she tried to convince him. “What would happen if you were clean and the Hive came for you? Then you’d be infected for real,” she tried to rebut.   
Paul held the small women in his hands and she was thankful she wouldn’t have to walk back.  
“Paul, you can’t leave us. You’re part of the team,” she tried to convince him.   
Paul sighed and didn’t bother fighting. “You should change your bandages,” he decided to say instead. “They’re a bit bloody.” He tried to catch a glimpse of Melissa as they came to the car.  
“That’s the last of my problems.”  
“Maybe there’s a first-aid kit in there?” He titled his head towards the station again. “You already ran this place dry, huh?” He couldn’t help but smile at the half-empty shelves.   
“Bone dry.”  
He set her down on the couch in the break room and began to rummage around for a first-aid kit.   
“I feel like such an idiot for not thinking about a first-aid kit. It’s because we didn’t have one at Beanies.”  
“Really?” Paul found the red box on the bottom shelf of a tin cabinet and came to sit on the couch with her. “Is that legal?”  
“Yeah. If you cut yourself on anything you were on your own. Zoey never really did any work so that didn’t bother her. Nora just got mad that I would get blood on the cups sometimes.” She put on a mocking voice, “‘that’ll scare away the customers, Emma!’ Like, piss off.”   
Paul laughed not so much at the story but at her delivery. He gestured for her to lie down as he took her leg and unravelled the bandages.   
“Oh shit,” Emma gaped. “That looks bad.” The stitches were removed the day before she was dismissed but the skin was an ugly yellow with a hint of purple and the wound in particular was crusted with dry blood. The skin where the rebar had exited her inner thigh was a deep violet bruise.   
“Yeah, I’m no doctor but it’s not nice,” Paul chimed in as he wrapped it back up in the fresh gauze he had found. “Have a pain killer, can you take them without water?”   
She nodded. “Only losers wash pills down.” She swallowed it in a rather painful process that made Paul raise one eyebrow in disbelief of her disclaimer.   
“You’re all fixed up,” he balled up the old bandages and tossed them into the bin. “You should go back to the car,” he rubbed the back of his neck.   
“Bitch,” Emma gestured for him to sit on the couch next to her. “You can’t say you’ll have to leave me and then just play it off like that. If you really think you’re going to leave I deserve a better goodbye.”   
Paul went bright red, stumbling over his words. “I’m not good at goodbyes.”   
“What better reason to just stay with us then! Come on!”   
“Melissa won’t let me come with you.”   
In his safe presence alone she could already feel herself growing sleepy.   
“Don’t fall asleep here, you have to go back to Melissa.”   
“Paul,” she started. “I need you to come with us.”   
“Melissa was right, don’t be mad at her. You should’ve seen the way they ripped the bunker apart. They can probably tell we’re together. You should get out of here as soon as you can.”   
Emma gave him a petulant frown.   
“If I have to confess,” Paul grinned when he saw the smile break out on her face. “My plan was to tail you, follow Hidgens while he’s still connected to the Hive.” He helped her up from the couch to escort her to the car. “You’ll be fine with Melissa, and I’ll be fine on my own for now. And once things clear up we can be together again.” Outside the car he planted a soft kiss on her forehead. It made him more flustered than her by a long shot.   
“I- Well I would-“ he gestured back and forth between his lips and hers. “I would kiss you but um!” He wasn’t the best with words even before he was infected. “I don’t want to accidentally infect you or anything, so...”  
She elbowed him, her mood lifted significantly. “Tease, making me wait.”   
Paul tugged at his collar, she loved his stupid, red face. “Goodnight, Emma.”   
“I’ll see you soon, Paul.”


	11. Greenpeace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greenpeace girl makes some progress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit shorter because I’ve been a bit busy lately but it’s going somewhere I promise

The apartment they chose was seven floors up. It still had running water and electricity and much to Emma’s delight a working elevator which made it much easier to bring Hidgens and the girl up.  
The first event of the day occurred when they brought the girl up, carrying her between the two of them towards one of the apartment beds. They were about to put her down when she let go of their shoulders, stood on her own feet for a few second, then collapsed and vomited blue shit all over the carpet.  
“That’s probably good,” Melissa bit her lip.  
“Hopefully,” Emma took a wide step back from the girl who had promptly passed out again. “Maybe we should change apartments.”  
And so to avoid any chance of contamination they moved to the next apartment over, dragging Hidgens around like a man too drunk to walk.  
At midday, they had sat down at the kitchen table and shared an already stale chicken sandwich. Melissa clearly hated the taste but didn’t want to stir up anymore trouble.  
“Emma, I still feel bad about leaving Paul behind, for you that is. You know he’ll be fine on his own right? Maybe we’ll see him again once this is over,” she started, taking one of Emma’s hands.  
“Uh, I get it Melissa, I know they could follow us. You did the right thing.” She wasn’t going to tell her Paul was going to follow them, she couldn’t risk having Melissa send him away again. “The Hive could follow him right to us if they wanted. You were smart to realise that.”  
The memory of last night came to her head, they way he held her and nursed her and the look on his face when he saw her. She could feel her skin warm up as she remembered his kiss, and how he told her he didn’t want to infect her. He was getting better again.  
“Why’re you smiling?”  
Before she could answer,the bedroom door slammed open and the girl came stumbling out. Her head was down and her eyes were mostly shut. She staggered about, grasping onto furniture to maintain her balance. She made it to the kitchen table and opened her eyes just long enough to look at Emma.  
“Are you okay?” Melissa looked up at her with more concern than fear.  
She gave a primitive grunt of confirmation before falling into one of the chairs and slamming her head down on the table. She stayed down.  
“We’re getting there,” she put her hand on her back, stroking it soothingly.  
Emma pressed her head against the table to try and look at the girl’s face. “I think she’s out again,” she observed. “Oh wow.”  
“I’ll leave her something to eat just incase she wakes up. I was thinking I should go scavenge for some more food. This’ll only last so long and soon we’ll have four mouths to feed.”  
“I’ll go,” Emma offered, wanting a chance to find Paul again. “I’m pretty fast.”  
“With that leg?” Melissa gestured to her bandages, she squinted for a moment when she realised they had been changed but seemed to think nothing of it. “You should stay here and rest. You kept watch and did the scavenging last night! You shouldn’t push yourself so hard.”  
“No, it’s okay I can go. If I never walk it it’ll never get better. I’ll take the gun and I’ll be fine. You’ve been soloing it for two weeks. You deserve as much sleep as you can.”  
Melissa blushed, taking off her glasses and rubbing them on her shirt as if she couldn’t get them clean. “Ah, thanks Em. Try not to go too far.”  
She was eager to get in the elevator and  
was bouncing on the tips of her toes on the long ride down, not at all thinking of the Hive.  
As if he had read her mind, Paul was waiting in the lobby with a patient smile.  
She hopped up to him, taking both his hands and leaning up to kiss his cheek.  
“Paul, you came!” She exclaimed.  
“Of course I did, I had to make sure no one was following you. The Hive is still far away. They’re trying to find you, I can’t quite feel them this far away so they might not be able to feel me either. I think I’m slipping out of it,” there was a slight shake in his voice that suggested he wasn’t quite ready to leave the Hive but he smiled nonetheless. “Once I’ve lost them they won’t be able to follow me anymore.”  
“Are you excited to do shit like eat and sleep again? I mean like, when you’re human?”  
“Oh,” he sounded like he had forgotten about that part. “Super excited be able to sleep again. Haven’t done that in a while.“  
“Well you aren’t going to get it. We’re taking turns keeping guard at night so you’ll have to pitch in.”  
They took the back exit of the hotel. The more time she spent with Paul the bigger her fear of Melissa finding out grew. Part of her felt like a rebellious teenager, the other part of her was burdened with such a heavy sense of guilt it was nearly crippling. Melissa could not find out about Paul.  
She decided to investigate a nearby home. It wouldn’t be rich with food but the proximity to the hotel was perfect. It was a good place to start.  
“This is a cute little home,” Paul ran his fingers over the kitchen table, it had been collecting dust. “Sort of.” He took to checking the fridge while she explored the rest of the home.  
“We’ve made progress with that girl from Greenpeace,” Emma began to explain. “She woke up today. Didn’t have much to say but she’s alive at least,” Emma only had to raise her voice slightly as she entered a bedroom off to the right. Her throat felt a bit raw from all the screaming and crying she had been up to lately.  
Paul let out a sound that suggested he was interested in her progress but not so much the fact itself. “Please don’t tell me you signed me up to get a hit in the head too.”  
“Oh shut up. I know it’s pretty barbaric but it’s a step in the right direction.” She inspected some of the clothing in the wardrobe. “I mean it’s probably causes by destroying the source of the infection itself, it’s like a mutation that creates the part of the brain that connects to the Hivemind. I suppose if you hit it hard enough it breaks but that’s gotta cause some sort of brain damage.” She shredded her lab coat and held out a blouse in front of the mirror on the wall to see how it would look.  
“I left all Hidgens’ notes about the apotheosis in the bunker. I just remembered. Shit.” “Well you aren’t ever getting those back. They tore the place apart looking for you two. Maybe when Hidgens wakes up from that hit on the head he’ll remember something. Hey, is honey worth taking?  
There’s three jars of it here.”  
“Hm?” She poked her head out of the bedroom, her hands full of shirts she had decided to take. “Oh! Yeah that’s nice,” her voice cracked as she spoke and she coughed. “My throat hurts like hell, isn’t that bad?”  
“Come here then, have some honey now,” he passed her a spoon. She didn’t think much of it but she couldn’t help but feel how domestic their conversation was, it was almost embarrassingly sweet. She wanted to punch him just to tone down the subtle romantic atmosphere he had created, or maybe she was just imagining it.  
She stared at him as she tried to process her thoughts and he stared back only because he liked to look at her.  
She was leaning further across the kitchen table towards him.  
“Anyways, I don’t think there’s much else in this kitchen for the taking.” He ruined the moment instantly but she was glad. Last night had made her so happy she couldn’t stop smiling, even in front of Melissa.  
After pilfering the house of its worth Paul ushered her back to the apartment block lobby. Going outside felt more dangerous now than when it was crawling with those monsters. Paul could sense her dread and took her hand.  
“If The Hive is getting close I’ll warn you.”  
They entered through the back door again, she felt like she was sneaking in after a curfew.  
He looked like he wanted to kiss her again, he was staring at her lips in a not at all subtle matter.  
She pulled on his tie, bringing him down to kiss him on the cheek. “Soon,” she told him. “Try not to go too far on your own. The infection has almost starved off I think.”  
“I’ll be around,” he promised, but made no comment on his connection to the Hive.  
It was a simple yet successful day for her, Melissa would be happy with the supplies they had found and the girl was almost better. More importantly, so was Paul.  
The elevator dinged when it reached the seventh floor and she hurried back to their room, dumping the supplies on the table to free up her arms.  
“Melissa?” She called out.  
“In here,” she called from the bedroom.  
The room was messier than she remembered leaving it. “She’s up, and she’s fine,” Melissa couldn’t help but smile. It was her first sign of hope.  
The girl was very awake now. She sat hunched over and curled up in the blanket, looking pale but much better than when she was infected.  
“Emma, meet Amelia, our very much human and no longer infected new friend.”


	12. The professor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hidgens wakes up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There aren’t too many chapters left at this point but thank you for sticking with me so long !! I hope you’ve all been enjoying it so far !

Since she had awoken Amelia had not said or done much but there was a clear change. She was hungry and thirsty but couldn’t hold anything down for long and had spent most of her time bundled up in blankets and lying on the floor. She seemed feverish but had no temperature.   
Melissa told Emma that when she woke up it was with such energy she thought she was still infected. She was full of Adrenalin and had ran around looking for an escape for a chaotic twenty seconds before succumbing to her sick state.   
Melissa had explained the situation and Amelia finally introduced herself.   
“I thought I died,” the girl had uttered. “I don’t remember how I got here.”   
She was even more cautious around Emma and terrified of Hidgens despite his unconscious state.  
Melissa and Emma shared dinner together while Amelia was on the couch under her pile of blankets, muttering in her sleep.   
“She isn’t quite gripping the apocalypse concept,” Melissa half-heartedly picked at a bag of chips. “She thought this was a kidnaping.”  
Emma sipped absently at her bottled water, keeping an eye on Amelia. “How do you know she isn’t still infected? I mean she’s never said anything to me. We haven’t heard her voice.”   
“Oh,” Melissa pushed their make-shift dinner towards Emma, signalling she had finished her share. “She talks to me. Just not when you’re around.”   
“Ooh, hooray for teamwork,” Emma sighed. “She’ll make a great addition.”   
“I dunno, isn’t ‘saving the planet’ the whole Greenpeace thing?” She sounded serious but when Emma turned to look at her she was grinning.   
Emma laughed quietly, not so much at her joke but she was just happy to see Melissa not so stressed. “If you’re the only one she’ll talk to you better not let her find out how hard you hit her with that bat.”   
Melissa giggled, shaking her head. “That doesn’t leave this room, okay?”   
“Got it,” Emma’s smile was tired but still genuine.   
“Do you want me to take the first watch?” Melissa offered. “You went scouting and you don’t look very well.”   
Emma stood up from the kitchen table, making an effort to keep it tidy. “I’ll do it. I wasn’t going to go to bed yet.”   
“Emma, you do like one hundred percent of the work here, I should take the first shift.”   
Emma rolled her eyes and laughed, patting Melissa on the back as she moved to stand by the windows. “This right here? Sitting and staring out a window, breaking into abandoned houses and stealing things? That’s ten times easier than the stuff I was doing before all this. I was juggling college and a full time job and my only friend was my biology professor so,” she gave an exaggerated shrug to show how little she cared. “I’d take the first shift every night if it meant I never have to do that again,” she was rambling out some bottled up emotions at this point because she would be lying if she said she didn’t miss it. Balancing work and school was much less stressful than keeping an eye out for your impending doom.   
“Don’t push yourself too hard Emma,” Melissa didn’t try to argue, she pushed her chair in and checked on Amelia once more before coming over and to Emma’s surprise, hugging her goodnight. “Once we settle in we can get back to working on a cure. We just have to wait for the professor to wake up. Don’t worry.”   
Maybe Melissa had interpreted her sudden uptake of work as suicidal in nature, especially after supposedly leaving Paul behind. Instead it was quite the opposite, the more chances she got to get out of the apartment the more often she could see Paul. She was still cheery after their encounter today and it was a constant fight to keep the smile off her face.   
“Goodnight Mel,” Emma tightened their embrace, just to assure her nothing was wrong. She could only imagine the guilt Melissa was feeling and all under false pretences too.   
“Amelia will probably stay there until the morning. She won’t bother you. Wake me up if she needs anything though, or if you do! Please uh, don’t overwork yourself or,” she started fumbling for words, failing to maintain eye contact.   
“I’m not mad at you Melissa. I really, really understand, go to bed now.”   
Melissa’s cheeks were a dusted pink. “Thanks,” she mumbled, trying to wipe the relieved smile off her face as she left for bed.   
Emma took a seat on the couch next to Amelia, listening to her angry mumbling.   
It wasn’t exactly comforting but it was it had no rhythm and was disjointed enough to not sound like a song.   
With Melissa away for the night she finally let herself smile.   
Paul was doing great, Amelia was making a full recovery and that meant Hidgens would follow. To top it all off, the Hive was nowhere on the radar.   
As if it was the dessert of an already sweet day, there was a quiet knocking on the window. She turned around to see Paul on the fire escape and hurried to open up the balcony door.   
“Paul!” She was careful not to raise her voice but couldn’t hide her surprise. “What’re you here for?” She gestured that it was okay for him to come in. “Melissa’s gone to sleep. You have to be quiet.”   
Paul have a thumbs up. “I just wanted to see where you were staying. It looks pretty safe alright.” He put his hands in his pockets and scanned the room as if he was fishing for conversation already.   
“Uh, yeah. Two exits. Can’t be too careful.” Usually their conversations didn’t stall so easily. “Hey, this is Amelia by the way! The Greenpeace girl? She’s sleeping but she’s all good!” Emma pointed to the shape on the couch.   
Paul bit his lip when he looked at her. “Amelia,” he repeated with a strangely venomous tone. “The Greenpeace girl.”  
“Do you know her?”  
“I know Amelia from the Hive a bit. We never duetted or had many harmonies. We worked in different areas. Just know that I give my money directly to the people who need it.”   
“Yeah? The Beanies tip jar?” She nudged him teasingly, trying to get a conversation flowing again, he forced a laugh and then his voice was stiff again.   
“Paul, is something wrong?”  
“Uh, well okay,” he tugged anxiously at the collar of his dress shirt. “Okay, okay so, it’s not all that urgent but...” he paused before opening his mouth again to continue,but there was a sound behind them.   
Emma pushed Paul back behind the couch, expecting to see Melissa but finding Hidgens instead.   
He loomed in the doorway of the bedroom he had been left in, watching the two of them closely. She didn’t know how long he had been there for.   
“Hidgens?” She blinked. “You’re up.”  
“It’s strange,” he started on a cryptic note. Paul emerged again from behind the couch, placing himself in front of Emma.   
“I wonder what happened, I can see you Paul, and I can see Amelia but I can’t feel them. Why is that, Emma?” His voice had no musical intonation and was hauntingly flat.   
“Ooh okay, uh- this is fine,” Emma held out her hands to warn him not to come any closer. “This happened with Amelia, remember? He’ll just be a little disorientated and then he’ll be fine.”   
“What happened to the Hive, Emma? Why aren’t they here?” He took one, off balance step forward. He looked more like a zombie than a person.   
“Woah, just stay back please,” she tried to catch his eye but he was looking at the floor. His whole body was prone to shivering like he was fighting to stay upright.   
“Emma, stay behind me. Just in case.”   
“He won’t attack me Paul, he’s basically my dad he can remember that much right? Right Hidgens?” She side stepped around Paul to hesitantly approach him. “Hidgens?”   
Slowly his hands rose to his skull and he gripped his head like he was in agonising pain. “Their voices!”   
“Shh, shhh! Please keep it down, please don’t yell. You’re fine! Just lie down again!” She inched forward, looking at the tense expression on his face. His eyes were wrenched shut and his lip was twitching. “Hidgens?” Gently, she placed a hand on his arm.   
“Not now!” He shouted, grabbing her wrist and pushing her back.   
He sunk to his knees, screaming through gritted teeth.  
“Painful transition,” Emma rubbed her wrist, deciding now to keep her distance.   
“Paul you should get out of here. Melissa will wake up.”  
Paul’s eyes darted between Emma and the Professor. “But you might get hurt!”   
“If Melissa finds you in here you aren’t going to make it out in one piece, Paul, now go!”   
Torn, Paul stood frozen in the apartment until the door to Melissa’s bedroom swung open, then he was gone in seconds. He called something to her but she didn’t catch it over the professor’s cries.   
Even Amelia woke up, she was so afraid she looked like she’d pass out again.   
Melissa didn’t know how to approach the professor but balled up her hands into fists just incase.   
“He-he’ll be fine!” Emma tried to reason before Melissa could do anything violent.   
Hidgens’ screaming came to a sudden halt and an exhausted groan escaped his mouth as he slouched onto the floor.   
Emma and Melissa relocated him to the bathroom just incase he was going to throw up.   
Emma didn’t want to move apartments again, that would give Paul too much trouble to find her again.   
“At least he didn’t try to kill you,” Melissa yawned. “He was a lot less trouble than Amelia. I didn’t sleep through too much did I?”   
“You came at the perfect time. It was just the screaming. That’ll bring the Hive running.”  
Before they moved to split up to return to their original spots Melissa paused. “I’ll finish the shift for you Emma. Amelia is up so I’ll stay with her.”   
She didn’t want to call it jealously but she did feel a bit excluded. She supposed it served her right for hiding Paul from Melissa though.   
Once he was fine she would bring him back and the three of them would reunite as one powerful team, with Amelia and Hidgens as new and loyal members. They would all get along with each other, even Melissa and Paul would stop bickering. They would be like one cobbled together family.   
That was her ideal ending, anyways.   
She slunk off to the bedroom, curling up under the blankets. The bed was still warm where Melissa had been sleeping. She was glad they were getting along okay but Amelia didn’t feel like part of the team, she threw off the dynamics by only talking to Melissa and in turn pushing Emma away.   
At least she still had Paul. She wondered what it was he had come to tell her but the thought only bothered her for a second before her fatigue finally caught up with her, it hit her like a wave and then she was asleep.


	13. Amelia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amelia is pretty smart for someone whos body has been possessed by an alien Hivemind for the past month or so

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s actually only 3/4 more chapters left I promise there’s a plot and I know where I’m going with it  
> & also it was such a dumb decision to make two minor characters like Melissa and Greenpeace girl main characters bc we know nothing much about their personality and I feel like I am doing them SO wrong

“Alright, that’s the both of them out of the Hive,” Melissa stirred honey into the cup of tea she had made. “Amelia and Hidgens. Did you say his first name was Henry? How do you know each other?”  
Emma nodded. “Long story. He was my Biology professor but I brought him groceries one time.”  
“That’s kind of you,” She began pouring a second cup, supposedly for Amelia.  
“Oh, because he’s like my father,” Emma continued.  
Melissa pursed her lips, her eyes were slitted like pouring the water required all of her attention. “Do you think maybe you should’ve lead with that?”  
“He isn’t my real dad, it’s just sort of like that.”  
“You’re losing me a bit, Emma. Come see if Amelia wants to talk.” She carried her cups from the kitchenette over to the couch, waking Amelia. “How’re you doing today?”  
She opened her mouth to start talking but caught sight of Emma. She gave a polite smile that Emma very much recognised as a customer service smile and turned back to Melissa and whispered something instead.  
“Uh,” Melissa’s eyes widened as if she wasn’t sure how to act upon her request.  
”Hi Amelia,” Emma started in her own customer service voice and a much faker smile. “I’m Emma. I know you’re having a bit of trouble getting back in the swing of things but we’re both here to help you settle in with us.”  
Amelia didn’t look phased but Melissa quickly intervened, shooting Emma a pointed look. “Yes exactly, Amelia is part of the team now too. I know this is a bit of change from Paul but we should just all get along together.” She attempted to diffuse things, moving to sit between the two girls instead of at the end of the couch. Amelia was listening carefully.  
“Amelia, would you like to say something to Emma?”  
She cleared her throat like she was about to give some grand speech. “Hi,” was all she said.  
Emma deadpanned. “Hey,” she got up from the couch. She wasn’t going to make any progress.  
“Woah, sit back down Emma. I’m the one going scouting today,” Melissa finished her tea and hurried to the door before Emma could. “I just want you to look after Amelia and Henry today. I won’t be out long, I promise. I don’t plan on being longer than an hour so if I’m not back-“  
“Where are you going?” Amelia sat up, giving Emma that suspicious look again.  
“Yeah!” Emma chorused. “I can go look for supplies. You should stay here.”  
“I’ve got a gun, I’ll be safe. You need to get some serious rest Emma. You two will be fine here.” She left before anyone could argue with her.  
Emma limped back over to the kitchenette to find something to eat. “Damn her caring heart.” She could feel Amelia watching her from the couch, even as she headed over to the bathroom to check on Hidgens.  
He was sprawled out on the tiles and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Hi Hidgens,” she sat with him for a second. “I don’t know if you can here me. I hope you’re doing better than last night at least. Anyways, Amelia’s sort of a bitch!” She looked down at Hidgens’ as if she were expecting a reaction. “I have to look after her today but I sort of wanted to go see Paul, so. Can’t I just go see Paul?”  
His head lulled to one side in a gesture that if you squinted, could be a nod.  
“Oh! Thanks!” She knew very well it wasn’t a nod but was desperate enough to get out of the apartment and find what Paul was up to today. Probably something more interesting than her.  
She pulled off the lab coat she had been wearing and rolled it up, tucking it under his head. “I guess you can have this back now. I’ll see you when you’re up.” She grunted as she stood up, wincing at the awful pain in her leg.  
She had her hand on the doorknob when Amelia walked up behind her.  
“Are you going to see Paul?”  
“Wh-no!?” She spun around, more shocked at her words than the fact she was actually speaking. “What do you mean?”  
“Oh, I just figured that’s where you were off to, that’s all.” She shrugged and returned to her spot on the couch.  
Emma’s jaw dropped, she marched over to the girl with a grimace. “What do you mean am I going to see Paul?”  
“Well, I thought-“ she sunk further back into the couch to put some distance between her and Emma. “He was here last night, that’s Paul right? And I could hear you talking in the bathroom.”  
“That was someone else!” She stomped her foot. She could tell how bad her arguments were and that only made the red in her cheeks deepen. “Melissa told me I wasn’t allowed to see Paul so why wouldn’t I listen to her?”  
The girl’s eyes rolled to the side, it bothered Emma how she wasn’t flustered. She was collected and unbothered by Emma’s tantrum. “I thought the bigger problem would be that he was supposed to be left behind, not what Melissa said.”  
Emma pointed a finger at Amelia, trying to come up with a response. “Well you know what?”  
“What?”  
Emma hoped she would’ve been able to come up with something in the time it took for Amelia to reply, but she didn’t. “Paul didn’t follow us,” she spat.  
“Subtle,” Amelia looked down at her fingernails, cleaning dirt from out underneath them. She was trying to keep a smug smile off her face. “Look, It’s not my problem if you want to go see Paul. I won’t tell Melissa.”  
Emma stalked back to the door, her head reeling. “What’s in it for you?”  
“Nothing. It’s just not my business. I don’t really know you. If you want to go get eaten by those musical zombie things, go ahead. I can tell you it wasn’t pleasant,” she gave a wry laugh and poured more effort into her nails as if she was trying to suppress the memory already. The suggestion had already taken its toll it seemed because she shut her mouth and couldn’t say anything else even as Emma left.  
“The jig is up,” Emma sighed in defeat when she met up with Paul. “That Greenpeace girl of all people was the one to find out you’re here.”  
“Well, she is very rude,” Paul scowled. “Does Melissa know?” They linked arms as they strolled down the street, headed nowhere in particular.  
Emma shook her head. “She said she’d keep it a secret but who knows if she’s telling the truth. She’s pretty close with Melissa, she’d probably spill if she asked nicely.”  
Paul shuddered and walked a little closer to Emma. “I hope she doesn’t.”  
“Yeah. Melissa said she’d only be out for an hour, she’s scavenging today I’m just sneaking out. I can’t hang around. Speaking of which, what were you trying to tell me last night before you left?”  
Paul gasped, placing his free hand on his head. “The Hive!” That was enough to send chills down Emma’s spine and make her skin crawl. “They think you’ve left the island.”  
“Oh, great!”  
“I know that sounds good in theory but it means they’ve ungrouped. The streets will be full of them soon.”  
“Ooh.” Emma shoved her cold hands into her pockets. “Well shit. We probably shouldn’t be out here strolling through the flowers then should we?”  
Paul snickered at her dry humour. “Guess not. Did you want to go back home?”  
“Not really but I have to get back before Melissa and it’s kinda cold.”  
Paul looked her up and down. “You got rid of that lab coat.”  
“I gave it back to Hidgens. He’ll be up soon after what happened last night.”  
Paul shrugged off his suit jacket, placing it around Emma’s shoulders. “I don’t really feel the cold, not while I’m still infected at least. So uh, I will need that back eventually.”  
It was about double Emma’s size and wasn’t actually very warm at all. She still smiled, it smelt like him. “How’s that going with the infection anyways? Feeling any clearer?”  
Paul looked thoughtful as they turned around to walk in the direction of the apartments. “Well if there was a number right now I’d probably harmonise, don’t know if I’d have the footwork to do any of that choreography now though,” he spoke in almost a teasing manner. “I did yawn last night. That’s exciting because I don’t need sleep.”  
Emma cheered for him, enjoying the rest of their walk home in a peaceful and much needed silence.  
“Just be extra careful when you’re keeping watch tonight, Em,” Paul reminded her when they returned to the lobby. “They’ll be coming back soon. Try not to get seen or else they’ll alert the whole island.”  
“Got it,” she leaned up to kiss him on the cheek and he kissed her forehead in return. It was a new unspoken ritual they had formed together. “Come up the fire escape again tonight. I’ll take first watch, we can hang out,” she pressed the elevator call button and groaned when it didn’t come immediately. “Shit, I think Mel came back early. She must’ve taken it up. I’m gonna get in trouble,” she held her hand to her forehead and growled, bothered.  
“Tell her you were just checking out the hallways for more supplies. Aren’t there vending machines or something?”  
“Perfect. Amelia better cover for me or I swear to god-“ the elevator ding cut her off as the doors open. She looked up at Paul with her best smile. “But anyways, see you later Paul.”  
They quickly exchanged goodbyes and she hopped into the elevator, preparing the perfect way to phrase her lie.  
Just as she expected, Melissa was not happy when she got back.  
“Emma, oh my god!” She threw her hands around her, pulling her into a spine-breaking embrace. “Neither of us know where you went!”  
Amelia stood to the side of the two girls, not joining in on the hug but watching with an unusual interest anyways.  
When Melissa pulled away she had turned her back, walking towards the kitchen and throwing her hands up in defeat. “Where did you go? Let me make you some tea, are you okay?”  
Amelia gave her a thumbs up as Melissa’s back was turned and Emma let out a sigh of relief. She watched Amelia’s face change from a nonchalant yet pleased look to one of confusion. She snatched Paul’s jacket off her shoulders.  
‘Are you kidding?’ She mouthed, gesturing wildly at the jacket. “Are you even trying to keep it a secret?” She hissed below her breath, dumbfounded.  
Emma had completely forgotten about it and looked back at Amelia with surprise.  
Amelia balled it up in both her hands and tossed it through the open doorway into the bedroom.  
“I was just checking out the janitors supply closet. There’s a bunch of good stuff in there,” she didn’t doubt her ability to cover up the truth but Amelia had a habit of stifling her laughter whenever she caught Emma in a lie which had been too many times for Emma’s liking considering they had only started speaking today. “And yeah, a cup of tea would be great Melissa,” she sunk into the couch by the window to stare down onto the streets below.  
When she listened carefully, she could hear the first notes of a song.


	14. The Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma realised there’s a different method to fix things than finding a cure

“So any more ideas for a cure get? It might be handy considering the Hive is closing in,” Paul was searching through the aisles of a service station as Emma browsed through the staff room. They had met up again behind Melissa’s back, this time with Amelia’s help. She had feigned a sickness so Melissa would stay to look after her.  
“In all honesty I was hoping Hidgens could give me a hand with that. He’s the professor I’m just a student at a community college.” She emptied the contents of a first aid kit into one of the shopping baskets. “We’ll need a new test subject. Would you have any clues? I mean like when you blew up the meteor did anything happen?”  
Paul blinked and stopped pulling things off shelves, “y’know, I don’t remember what happened. I just remember music and flashing and I...” He looked at her, knitting his eyebrows. “I was infected so don’t cut into me here but I don’t remember if it blew up or not.”  
“Well did you throw a grenade?” Emma raised one eyebrow with a growing concern.  
“I did, I pulled the pin, I think. But I breathed in the spores and I thought I died, the next thing I remember is seeing you outside the hospital in Clivesdale, and it felt like it was in a dream. I’ve really only been feeling fully awake since a few days before we left Hidgens house.”  
“Hold on a sec, Paul,” Emma ditched her shopping basket and limped over to Paul, grabbing his tie and pulling him down a bit so she could look him in the eye. “Did you or didn’t you blow up the meteor?”  
“I don’t know, I pulled the pin so it should’ve blown up!” He took a step back and held his hands up in defence. “I wasn’t in my own body Em, I died.”  
Emma let go of his tie to pace in a nervous circle. “We should go, we should go to the Starlight right now. We can take the car, you drive yeah?”  
Paul picked up the basket of supplies he had collected and rushed to follow Emma out and back to the hotel where they had left the professor’s car.  
“Should I let them know I’m going? No. Melissa will not let me go. We won’t be long it’s not far,” She rambled her thoughts aloud.  
“Emma the Starlight is dangerous. I think you missed the part where I said I died?” He grabbed her shoulder to stop her running. “You have a bad leg and no weapons. What are you going to do if there are people there? Hell, what’ll you do even if there aren’t? The spores are air born.”  
“I’ll hold my breath, it’s been two weeks the air is probably much clearer now!”  
“Foolproof,” Paul scowled, reluctantly getting into the drivers seat. He knew he couldn’t stop her and decided he could better focus his energy on protecting her.  
“Don’t drive fast,” she slapped his hand away from the hand break. “We can’t let Melissa hear.”  
The streets were still empty but they had a completely different atmosphere.  
She could catch glimpses of shapes moving on the other sides of windows, eyes followed her as they drove.  
They knew she was coming.  
She began to recognise the buildings and the roads they drove down the streets.  
A song grew louder and clearer as they drove further into Hatchetfield.  
It built itself up like a pyramid: first were the low baritones, then the tenors and the sopranos. Hundreds of voices intwined in a sirens wail, luring in their newest victim.  
They weren’t hiding anymore, she could see them looking down at her from the roofs of buildings, standing in the doorways and the alleys watching her with fixed stares.  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Emma sunk lower in her seat so she didn’t have to look at them. The last thing she wanted to see was a familiar face.  
“We can turn around,” Paul spoke through gritted teeth, watching the road carefully. “You don’t have a single weapon.”  
“Yeah but the grenades will still be there if the whole ass theatre didn’t blow up? It’s not like these guys have a use for them!” In the side mirror she could see them slowly start to converge on the car.  
“Shit, oh fuck,” Emma covered her ears in a futile attempt to block out the song. Sweat stuck her shirt to her back and she could feel her head start to ring.  
Paul locked the car doors as the car rolled to a stop outside the theatre.  
The crowd stopped following, lingering a few buildings down. Their blue eyes watched eagerly, blue goo was drooling from their mouths down their chins.  
The Hive was hungry for a feed.  
The song was at its loudest but below all the noise she could hear excited whispers of her name.  
She peered over the back seat into the tangle of people but recognised no one familiar. Not even a customer from Beanies’ or an old face from Hatchetfield High.  
“I have to do this, we can’t even turn around now.”  
“I can ram them if you want me to.”  
The crowd thickened, with every moment she stayed in the car they closed in on her. Their voices rose in pitch and her name was thrown around more often as if the idea of infecting her was as fulfilling as the act alone.  
“We’ll run.”  
“You can’t run,” Paul was keeping his eyes on the crowd.  
“I can run it’ll just hurt.”  
“Same difference.”  
“Having a sore leg is different to being turned inside out and ripped apart by a bunch of freaks.” She undid her seatbelt and leant forward in her seat. “The door is close I can make it. We’ll barricade it once we’re in. Come on we have to go now!”  
The boldest of the Hive were close enough to touch the back of the car.  
“Emma!” Paul growled at her stubbornness. He undid his seatbelt and unlocked the car doors.  
She was first out, pushing the pain in her leg out of her mind as she bolted for the red theatre doors. She could see Paul in her peripheral vision only a little bit behind.  
She hit the door with her shoulder, throwing it open far enough for Paul to follow. The second she knew he was in she slammed the heavy door shut.  
“Thank fuck.” She caught her breath, letting pain ebb through her body,  
a pain snaked up through her veins. “We made it Paul.”  
“Don’t speak too soon. Shut your mouth, don’t breath in,” he reminder her, deciding to hold his own breath. He tapped her shoulder and pointed down the row of seats to the main stage.  
There the meteor sat.  
It had caved in in its centre, luminous blue rubble surrounded the rock but it was not completely destroyed. She could see the damage from Paul’s grenade: the stage curtains were singed and there was a hole in the stage.  
“That’s it,” she whispered, creeping down the aisles cautiously.  
The song outside was drowned out which only made it all the more frightening when a new one begun inside the theatre.  
She recognised the girl who emerged from stage left, pirouetting and spinning to centre stage.  
“You’re late.” A spotlight flooded the stage but she didn’t need it to recognise Nora, she could tell from their words alone.  
Two more infected filed out into the aisle behind them, blocking them from exiting.  
Paul shuddered at sight. He was already struggling to be back here again. His hand was clutched to his heart and he was breathing hard.  
“Bill? Zoey?” Emma breathed.  
More and more people appeared from behind curtains and chairs and walls, all coming to take a seat like it was their turn to watch a show. They kept appearing in the aisles, pushing Emma and Paul down until they were the ones on the stage.  
She recognised each and every face. From old teachers and childhood friends to more familiar ones like the Clivesdale nurse and Ted.  
Then, in one ghostly chorus they all spoke.  
“We’ve been waiting for you, Emma.”


	15. The meteor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Paul try to destroy the meteor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was long oofh

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Nora grinned slyly as Ted and Bill joined her on stage.  
“You don’t have to struggle, just breathe in the air. What happened, Paul? You ran from us.” Bill moved in languorous circles around the two, not taking his relaxed gaze off them once. Emma and Paul moved back to back, she started looking for the belt of grenades that should’ve been left in the theatre.  
“You really let us down!” Ted clapped his hands, looking at her with a false amiability. “And now you see, we have a bit of a dilemma, Emma.” He moved in close, blocking her view of the theatre. This close, she could see a bullet hole in his neck. She breathed in short and quickly before holding her breath again. The burning in her lungs was starting to bother her.   
He nonchalantly wiped blue blood off his lips, continuing with a big smile on his face. “The Hive is hungry, but we’re not happy with you! Amelia, Henry, and now Paul? You’re pulling our family apart and we don’t like that. It makes us very mad.” She tried to drown out his words, craning her neck to look behind him into the sea of faces.   
They stared back at her with identical, over-joyous expressions, some of them called her name out.   
“But here’s something, a plan that isn’t half bad,” without any need for vocal signs, Bill and Ted fell back into line in perfect steps to let Nora take over.  
She opened her mouth to catch another breath of air. Breathing in was like opening a floodgate, she could hear strained chords and broken notes lingering in the back of her mind every time she breathed in.   
“So we propose, if you lead us to your base and to your friends we’ll give you a few days of grace. But if not...” Nora silenced the music from the crowd by raising one hand.   
Her footsteps echoed out through the theatre as she walked towards the meteor. She leant over, sticking her hand into the rubble as if she knew the exact location of the item she was looking for.   
In a moment that shattered Emma’s hopes she pulled back the belt of grenades.   
“We’ll kill you.”   
The sincerity of her words shook Emma to her core and she couldn’t find it in her brain to react. Her heart stopped and the pain in her lungs nearly vanished. For a split second she couldn’t feel her body.  
Paul turned around, wrapping his arms around Emma’s shoulders protectively.   
She stole another breath and the volume of the music in her head shocked her. It was malevolent and teasing like it knew she was going to lose.   
Her arm twitched without her permission. She fell into Paul’s grasp, letting him support her weight entirely. She took her minds off Nora’s words to focus on shutting out the song in her head.  
She held her arm tightly to her chest like she was nursing an injury. Her stomach grew unsettled and she felt like she was going to vomit.   
On reflex, she opened her mouth and leant forward. Paul slapped his hand over her jaw, shutting her mouth again.   
“Don’t breathe,” he hissed below his breath.  
“I trust the good professor passed on our message,” Bill and Ted danced back in. All three of them were so close she could feel their breath on her skin. She clung onto Hidgens’ words in her head before they could be washed away in the stream of other thoughts crashing through her head:   
If she didn’t cooperate they wouldn’t hesitate to rip her limb from limb.   
The crowd in the audience split like the Red Sea, creating a perfect bee-line towards the exit.   
Their song rose with excitement. Emma’s whole body convulsed in a movement perfectly in time with the song. The sick feeling grew worse. Her vision was blurring around the edges from holding her breath.  
“Let it out, Emma,” Ted gave a nod of approval.   
“Will you show us to your friend?” Nora gestured down the aisle to the exit. “Or will you finally meet your inevitable end?”   
Emma exhaled heavily, letting the dizziness in her vision clear for only a second.   
Paul let go of her, stepping back and eyeing the exit.   
She was unsteady on her feet but the sickness and pain she felt was louder than the song.   
“Fuck you, Nora.” She lunged for the grenade belt, tackling her boss to the ground. The Hive reacted in seconds, swarming towards the stage and cutting Paul off from Emma.   
It was a fight against only herself, all she had to do was get the belt but she couldn’t stop her hands and legs moving on their own accord to some half-assed song the infected now cheered at the top of their lungs.   
Her vision was constantly obscured as hands reached out for her, pulling at her collar and her hair and the bandages on her leg.   
It was only when she lost Nora to the crowd that she noticed she couldn’t see Paul anymore.   
“Paul!” She cried out, listening for his voice above the music. She fought to stand on her feet again.   
Dozens of them pushed up against her trying to grab hold of her.   
There was nowhere to stand and no way to move forward.   
Dozens of hands raked at her skin and tore at her clothes, they gripped her wrists and her ankles and her neck, pulling at her hair and pushing her around.   
Everything was happening so fast her body couldn’t register where the pain was.  
They ripped holes through her clothes and tore at the skin underneath. She was shoved and dragged from one person to the next every second, instead of seeing one face her brain started cobbling together warped and twisted combinations to try and explain what was happening.   
Her screams blended into the song.  
She was dizzy and sick but every time she collapsed they forced her back to her feet.   
Shit, this is how she would die. They were going to bleed her dry. It would’ve been easier to go down at the hands of Paul back in the Clivesdale hospital. They were dragging it out for fun, they could kill her any second and they made sure she knew that.   
A foot came down hard on the back of her leg, knocking her over. She felt a hand tighten around her thigh and tear away the bandages. The sight of purple bruising and swollen skin made them shout out with joy. They honed in on the scar, scraping and pulling at the stitches. She could feel blood run down her legs as the wound reopened. With the sheer amount of them gathering around her then were satisfied with the damage to her injury and it was over in seconds. They directed their attention back to her as a whole and pain exploded under her skin.  
She wished she would pass out, she wished she would die already. Pain cancelled out fear. She writhed, she couldn’t even feel pain at this point, her whole body felt fuzzy and distant to her mind.  
She couldn’t see anymore and all sound was just a high-pitched buzzing.   
All of a sudden it was easier to breath. Some distant part of her mind still fighting for consciousness could tell the crowd had lessened significantly and people were being pried off of her.   
Relieved to finally be safer she let go, drifting into a safer and happier unconsciousness with the idea of who saved her completely irrelevant.  
She never quite fell asleep. She remained in a limbo of awareness where she could still experience everything happening but couldn’t process any of it at all.  
For what seemed like a second but must have been much longer she regained feeling in some parts of her body.   
She guessed she was lying down on the backseat of the car, the engine was roaring as it sped down the street.   
She could feel the tips of her fingers and twitched them as much as she could. She could see her skin was covered in a light coat of what she only later realised was blood.   
It hurt to look around but her eyes drifted slowly up to the front seat. It was Paul. She managed to smile.   
He had a bad tear in the shoulder of his white dress shirt and a smear of blood on his cheek. He had the grenade belt thrown over his shoulder. She couldn’t see him very well from where she lay but she could understand the feeling of urgency.  
She fell back into the awareness limbo, focusing any of her mind power on the rumbling of the engine.   
It upset her head when the engine stopped and it upset her stomach worse when she was lifted out of the backseat.   
She got a better grasp on reality by the time they were in the apartment elevator. She opened her eyes only to find them blurred by tears she didn’t know she was crying.   
“Shit,” she managed to mumble. Even her mouth hurt.   
Paul was holding her tight to his chest. His breathing was shallow and panicked and she could feel his heart racing.   
The elevator dinged as it reached the seventh floor and Paul hurried out towards their apartment room.  
In her state, it never came to her that it would be a problem for Melissa to see Paul again.  
When he knocked on the door it opened in seconds.   
She could hear Melissa gasp but she didn’t waste time ushering Paul inside.   
She could hear Amelia and even Hidgens somewhere inside the apartment.  
Everything came to a standstill as Paul carried her into the living room.   
Questions flew at Paul from every side but she couldn’t understand them. It sounded too loud, too much like music.   
She fought her way from Paul’s hold and got to her own feet. Her whole world swayed and everyone quietened again to watch her with concern.   
She limped towards the bathroom, ignoring the stinging under her skin.   
She made it to the sink as vomit forced its way up her throat.   
She felt defenceless as she huddled up on the floor next to the sink. There were whispers of song hiding in the back of her head and one of her fingers tapped out a rhythm. Her throat didn’t feel clear.   
She could just see her reflection in the bathroom mirror, their skin was stained crimson and they could feel blood pooling in the bottom of one of her shoes.  
She noticed now that she had lost the other. She pulled off her shoe and managed to toss it to the other side of the small bathroom.  
She pulled her shredded and bloody shirt over their head. It was so ripped it was barely an item of clothing.   
There were red marks all down her back and across her stomach. She looked like she had been beaten by a mallet about a dozen times.   
She shut her eyes for only a moment but when she opened them she was lying in bed.   
She could hear Melissa shouting and scolding someone in the hallway but couldn’t decipher it.   
Her head was foggy like she was just waking up from a deep sleep and the world didn’t make sense. She was taken by surprise when a shape moved in the darkness at the foot of the bed.   
“Emma, you’re up,” she recognised Hidgens’ voice. “She’s awake!” He called to the people arguing in the hallway. He moved sluggishly to call them, he must have only woken up this morning after she left.   
Melissa and Paul raced in, kneeling over by her side at the bed.   
Amelia followed in after, a timid frown on her face.   
“I was so scared! I didn’t know where you went!” Melissa’s eyes were red like she had been crying.   
“I was too, I thought you’d be back within the hour!” Amelia put in.   
“You were with Paul!?” Melissa sounded angry for a second but quickly brought her voice back down. “I’m just so glad he got you out of there.”   
They both had so much to say.   
Hidgens still looked tired and pale like Amelia had after waking up and didn’t have much to say but was looking at her with a deep relief and teary eyes.   
She searched the room with her eyes for Paul, they locked eyes.   
“Paul,” she started.   
He moved forward hesitantly and humbly, kneeling down to take one of her hands.   
Emma tightened her hand around his. “You didn’t sing. You’re clean.”


	16. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma is a bit worried about her recovery

She spent the first hour of the morning staring lazily at the ceiling.   
She had finally found a position to lie in that didn’t hurt her whole body and was content to stay still for the time being. She could tell Hidgens was sitting at the foot of the bed overseeing her but didn’t have any energy to make conversation, it seemed he didn’t either.  
She assumed he was only watching her because he was too tired himself to go out on patrol or scavenge. Although waking up to your foster-child stumbling in covered in blood must’ve been a shock to wake up to as well.  
He was silent, just as Amelia had been but she could feel that he was only letting her rest.   
She grunted to let him know she was up and he nodded. He had some papers in his lap that he was reading over lazily. He organised them up in a pile and smiled softly at her, keeping the peace.  
“What’s happening?’ She mumbled.   
“We’re all here,” he breathed, circling something in the papers on his lap. “In the kitchen.” He set the papers down and moved so she could see him better without shifting from her spot. “I heard the whole story from Paul and that young Melissa. You’ve been doing such a good job.”  
“We’re pulling through alright. It’ll be easier with you here now. Are you feeling okay?”   
Hidgens chuckled anxiously like the topic of his own health wasn’t one he was comfortable talking about. “Well I can only imagine this is what it feels like to wake up from a coma,” he said eventually. “I’m just feeling drowsy. More importantly, I’ve managed to stay the bleeding, you’ll be fine after some rest. How does your head feel?”  
There were still quiet voices in her head but for now the loudest was hers. “It’s fine,” she lied. “I’m feeling alright.”  
“And your leg? I fixed the stitches again while you were out.”  
“That’s probably why it hurts so much,” she quickly took her weight off her bad leg. “It feels like it’ll be fine.”   
He shuffled about in the drawers of the room before laying a bundle of clothes down at the end of the bed. “Get changed when you can get up. I’ll let the others know you’re awake.” He had only just opened the bedroom door when Melissa charged in, throwing herself down by Emma’s side with with a glare.  
She spent the second hour of the morning being barraged by Melissa.   
“Why did you go without telling me? Why didn’t you have any weapons on you! What if you were infected, what if you were hurt worse than you already are! How’re we going to fix your leg? And you were still seeing Paul!?”  
Somehow it was the last thing that made her more frustrated than concerned.  
“Sorry, Mel,” Emma sighed. “I was pissed, I had no clue what the hell I was thinking.”   
“Uh yeah! You bet, idiot! We didn’t make it this far for you to make a dumb decision like that and get killed!”   
“Where’s Paul?” She asked, tilting her head ever so slightly to look at Melissa.   
“We’re all inside. The streets are full of them now. Hidgens was only up since this morning and god, he’s exhausted but he’s developed tests and has been running them on Paul and Amelia and even himself, just to make sure they aren’t infected anymore. They’re all clean.”   
“What about us?” Emma winced as Melissa helped her sit up. She had brought a wet towel when she came in to wipe the dried blood off her skin.   
“Well why would he have to test us? We were never infected,” she scrubbed at Emma’s skin harder, stressed by the suggestion alone.   
“Ouch- hey! Hey!” She batted Melissa’s hand away and it managed to pull her out of the trance she was stuck in.   
“Oh, sorry,” she looked at the towel in her hand, sighing deeply. “Don’t make me even think about that. All that matters is that no one in this apartment is singing.” She set the towel down on her lap, taking both of Emma’s hands in hers. “I know we have a pretty big group now but remember when it was just us?”  
Her throat hurt when she chuckled. “That was only one day, Paul showed up a couple of hours after we met remember?”   
“Well it was a good couple of hours,” she reached over to pick up the bundle of clothes left on the end of the bed and helped her burrow into a clean shirt. “God,” she laughed. “When I was a secretary with a stupid crush on a barista I didn’t really think this would be how we met.”   
“You have a crush on me?” Emma raised one eyebrow.   
“Well, the last horse crosses the finish line, yeah. I love Amelia, and I love Paul like a brother, and your dad or Professor or whoever he is, well he’s pretty neat too. But I trust you the most though and I don’t think you understand how scared I was.”   
Melissa sat up on the bed with her and carefully embraced her, Emma could hear a gentle sobbing.   
‘Infect her,’ the quiet voices in her head shouted all of a sudden. ‘Join us, sing! Tell us where you are.’   
Emma pushed Melissa away, her breath caught in her throat. “Oh, um, Melissa I think I need to be alone for a bit. Do you think I could talk to Paul for just a second?”   
Melissa nodded, gathering the towel and and using it to wipe her tears. “I’ll send him in.”   
It was easier to sit in silence with Paul. He understood she didn’t want to talk the second he came in. He sat next to her and stared up at the ceiling with her.   
“Paul,” she whispered after a while. “I think something bad has happened.”   
“Tell me about it, Hidgens has been taking blood samples all morning. He’s been making everyone sing to test their vocal range.”   
“Not that, I think I’m infected,” she whispered.   
“No,” Paul said with almost no hesitance. “Unless they you know ‘puked in your mouth.’”  
“But what about you? You breathed in the spores.”  
Paul shook his head again, although her persistence was grating on him. “I was in there longer and I wasn’t holding my breath.”  
“I can hear voices in my head.”   
Paul flinched, startled. “What sort?”   
“I dunno. I can’t really hear them very well.”   
“Well maybe it’s just a headache,” Paul tried to convince her. “I breathed in the spores but the infection starved off after a while. I’m sure you’ll be completely fine in a day or two, just don’t listen to them.”   
Emma nodded, shutting her mouth and crossing her arms over her chest. She tried to hear the voices but could only make out faint words. “Yeah, yeah I’m sure I’m fine. My blood isn’t blue and I don’t want to sing.”   
Paul gave her a thumbs up. “See? Better already.”  
Emma readjusted positions to take weight off her bad leg, she groaned as she rolled onto her side. “Is Melissa mad at you?”  
“Mad that I let you go, but she’s really happy I’m back I think. After we got you settled in she cried into my arms for like half an hour.”   
Emma smiled, closing her heavy eyes. “That makes me happy at least.”   
“Melissa’s plan is to go back and destroy the meteor. All five of us, we can run and gun our way through can’t we? We’ll just wait for you to get all patched up.” He patted her shoulder and got off the bed again, pointing to the door. “Get some rest. We’re going to eat lunch, do you want anything?”  
She shook her head but returned his thumbs up. “Excited for your first meal back?”   
“You know it,” he stopped by her side of the bed, kneeling awkwardly by her pillow. He leant over to kiss her forehead.   
“Oh,” She shied back, surprised.   
Paul rubbed his neck. “Uh, well I’ve been waiting all this time to be clean for a proper kiss but I guess that’ll have to wait a bit longer, just in case.”  
Emma nodded respectfully. She could understand that. A kiss could wait, she didn’t want to risk getting him infected all over again.  
he gave a polite wave goodbye as he left for lunch.   
She didn’t feel hungry at all. She hoped it was because she was unwell and not something worse.   
She listened to the quiet shuffling about and clang of plates and cutlery as they ate away at something that was surely still convenience store food.   
Hidgens was the first one to visit her after the meal. He brought her a plate with a poorly constructed ham and cheese sandwich on it.   
“You should eat.”   
“Not hungry.”   
He left the plate by her table and collected his papers again. “How are you feeling, Emma?”   
She shrugged. “Sore I guess.”   
The voices hid in the corner of her mind but she could hear them hissing, unhappy.   
‘Sing!’ One voice tried to command her.   
“Do you remember anything from when you were in the Hive?”   
He shook his head, sitting down in a chair by the window to stare out at the streets below. His back faced her.  
“You told me the Hive was going to rip me apart if I didn’t come with you.”   
A feeling of discomfort fell over the Professor and she could feel it too.   
“And you tried to do a lot of bad stuff,” she murmured, watching his reaction. “You said the Hive was much better, that it was like family.”  
“Well in hindsight clearly that isn’t true,” he gave a short and quiet, defeated laugh as she teased him. “I wasn’t in my right mind, Emma. I don’t remember any of it. The Hive has violent and malicious intentions. I’m better now, I’ll make sure you stay safe. I’d prefer not to hear what that alien told you, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”   
Emma fiddled childishly with her fingers, she liked it when he comforted her.   
“I’ve made some incredible findings in my studies.” He raised the papers in his hands. “Paul and Amelia had bigger vocal ranges than someone who hadn’t been infected like Melissa. It’s my theory that the apotheosis has long lasting physical effects on a person.”   
“Testing, huh?”   
“Would you mind singing something for me something, my dear?”   
Emma gaped. “Oh, I couldn’t.” She was worried to hear what would happen. She didn’t need any confirmation that she might be infected. “My throat is really sore.” She could see he wasn’t satisfied. “I screamed a lot, I really cried.” She didn’t want to make herself so vulnerable like that but she couldn’t have him test her. She wasn’t sure what they would do if she was infected.   
“Do you know La Vie en rose?” He asked.   
“I don’t know the lyrics,” she stammered.   
“I’m sorry, I’m tired Hidgens. I’m going to try and get some rest.” She brought the blanket up to her face, hiding her gaze.   
“Well try and eat something then at least. I’ll be here.” He stayed by the window with his papers, watching the streets down below carefully as a victory song rose into the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This feels like it’s really starting to drag on oofh I promise there is an end in sight


	17. Downtown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we fucking go fellas

“Still think you’re infected?” Paul asked after dinner the next day. She still hadn’t felt hungry.  
“Yeah,” she shifted around, feeling stiff after lying in bed for too long. “I think I can feel where they all are, it’s like there are bugs crawling under my skin,” she scratched the back of her head as if that would make it go away.  
“Oh, I sort of remember that. Everything’s pretty foggy from my time in the Hive but you can really feel where everyone is, huh?”  
She nodded, brushing her fingers across the scratches on her skin. Every time she opened her mouth she was scared she would say something she couldn’t control. “This is what I get for being reckless,” she huffed. “Maybe I died a long time ago and this is hell.”  
“Do you think you should let Hidgens test you?”  
She snorted. “What, and disappoint him? Let Melissa hit me upside the head too?”  
“They wouldn’t,” Paul tried to stop her before she completely refuted the idea. “They would want to help you.”  
“I think you forget that I was Infected Paul’s number one advocator. It was Melissa who left you behind.”  
“Do you know,” Paul began, swiftly changing topics. “Members of the Hive heal pretty well. Like Bill? He uh,” Paul choked on the memory for a second. “He was shot. But he’s out there singing and dancing now. Hidgens? Stomach ripped open?”  
“Don’t make me think about it.” She shuddered, elbowing Paul. “He’s better now, I get it. Where are you going with this?”  
“So, on the bright side maybe you won’t be bedridden for that long!”  
Emma threw the sheets over her face so she wouldn’t have to look at Paul. “There’s no bright side. I say we march down there right now and blow the damn thing up for real.”  
Paul put a hand on her shoulder to push her back into bed when she stood up. “You aren’t going anywhere just yet. You look like you’ve been hit by a car.”  
“Oh yeah. Thanks for noticing, the Hive tried to kill me. I’m really rocking this look aren’t I?” She scowled, resigning herself to staying in bed.  
“You don’t have to get mad. Just work on recovering. You should try to sleep.”  
“Well I’ve been trying all day, I have too much on my mind!”  
Paul grumbled a bit, his shoulders falling. He turned to Emma with a worried look and sighed. “I think we should tell them.”  
“No! Are you crazy? I’m barely infected, I’m not even worried about it. I’m not infected at all, I’m just too sick to eat and the voices in my head are just my thoughts.”  
Paul looked unconvinced, he tilted his head. “And what are the voices telling you to do?”  
“I can’t hear them well enough. Maybe I just have a concussion.” Emma turned away from him, rolling onto her side and pulling the sheets back up.  
“We’ll get Hidgens to test you, let’s go.”  
“What!?” She spat. “I don’t think so!”  
“Come on, it’s important to know if you’re infected or not. It’ll give us both some peace of mind to have an answer,” he pleaded. “There are things we have to take extra risks for if you’re infected. We can’t ignore that. You have to.”  
“Ugh,” she clung to the blanket for a moment longer before acquiescing and letting Paul help her out of bed. “If they kill me the blood is on your hands!” She growled as he carried her to the living room.  
“Emma!” Melissa smiled when she saw her, looking up from Have you been holding up alright? Do you want anything to eat?”  
“Uh...” Paul let her down onto her own feet, keeping an arm around her to stop her falling.  
“I took Amelia on her first scout! There’s a school pretty close by and we found some weapons.”  
“We’ve decided when we go to the meteor that it’s important not to kill anyone from the Hive, so we won’t take guns,” Hidgens elaborated. “We’ll take bats, and knives for emergencies.”  
Emma felt her heart sink at the mention of bats again, instinctively she backed up against the wall.  
Amelia looked up at Emma. “You’re not looking too fresh, Em,” she stated matter-of-factly.  
“Uh, Professor,” Paul’s grip on Emma shifted from one that would stop her falling to one that would hold her in place.  
“We think-“  
“You think,” Emma interrupted.  
“Okay, I think it’s for the best if you test Emma.”  
“Why would we need to test Emma?!” Melissa shot out of her chair, her hand coming down with a bang on the table. “Why would she even be infected? She isn’t infected, she’s fine, I know!” She held a hand to her heart, walking between Emma and the Professor.  
She knew the truth as well as Emma did.  
The professor coughed and cleared his throat, rising from his chair with his hands in his pockets like weights. “Emma, dear.” Through his hesitance she could feel his fear.  
Amelia watched on with a detached countenance.  
“Sing me something, please.”  
“I’d really prefer not to. I’m not a performer like you,” she tested to see how tight Paul was holding her.  
“Don’t get aggressive,” Paul warned her as he noticed her trying to edge away.  
“Can’t you, god, I don’t know. Take a blood sample?”  
“It’s much faster this way. Any song, Emma.”  
“She doesn’t have to!” Melissa argued, coming to try and take Emma away from Paul.  
“It’d be easier if you two didn’t struggle,” Amelia suggested. “If she’s infected we have to know.”  
“Exactly, thank you Amelia,” Paul dipped his head thankfully in her direction.  
“I’m a good singer, singing won’t tell you anything about me.”  
Hidgens handed her the notes he had been writing for the past few days. “Whether you can sing or not, a song should elicit a positive response to someone infected. Any song, Emma. What about that little song you sing at work?”  
“Get it over with,” Amelia put in, impatient with the building tension. “I’ve been down to that coffee shop of your enough times, how does that song of yours go?”  
Emma bit her lip. “I don’t remember. The apocalypse started on the same day I learnt it! I forgot it the second I left!”  
“Of course you remember it, I remember it! You aren’t making a good case for yourself here.”  
Hidgens exhaled loudly, putting his papers back down with defeat. “Refusing to sing is much more incriminating.”  
“Oh fine,” she felt her chest tighten and her skin go cold. “I can do it. I can sing, just don’t stare at me like that.”  
Amelia was the only one who actually looked away, showing some semblance of respect for her dignity.  
She stepped clear of Paul and smoothed our her shirt. “Now this was a three person harmony so don’t give me shit for it.” She procrastinated for a moment longer before their stares were too much.  
“Get your cup of Roasted coffee,” she started. The music didn’t seem off, even as she sung it without the help of her coworkers, she kept tune perfectly well much to her own surprise. “And we’ll bring it right up,” she felt like she was holding something back but she couldn’t tell what until her foot started tapping. Her leg didn’t hurt at all. Then the choreography and lyrics came perfectly, it was satisfying to twirl and sing out and it was like she could hear Nora and Zoey singing along inside her head. She ended the number with a frustrated “fuck off,” to the voices in her head.  
“I don’t think those are the lyrics,” Amelia filled in the silence.  
“So- so what now?” Melissa gaped, she seemed paralysed with shock. “Are you telling me she’s infected?”  
“Well she certainly seemed to enjoy it,” Amelia murmured.  
Emma wanted to argue but she couldn’t. She was overwhelmed with an almost euphoric feeling for several seconds as the voices grew louder. When the voices faded again it felt like she had zoned out and lost track of the conversation.  
Hidgens ran his hands through his grey hair, pulling at it. “This is fine. She’ll be fine,” he spoke like he was trying to convince himself more than everyone else. “No more singing, keep her away from music,” he ordered.  
Emma half expected Melissa to go for her bat and swing it into Emma’s head but she was rooted to the spot.  
“Hey, Melissa! Don’t look so frightened, she’s fine,” Paul moved to try and snap the secretary out of her trance. “We can use it to our advantage, think! She can feel where the infected are, she can tell if they’re part of the Hive or not. Imagine how useful that’s going to be when we head down to the Starlight! Just breathe!”  
“She’s going to be fine,” Amelia confirmed. “I was much worse than her apparently, but here I am. There’s Paul, there’s the professor. Emma will be just fine.”  
“I feel like this is my fault,” she brushed her hair out of her eyes and took of her glasses, wiping them on her shirt over and over again.  
“It’s not, it’s completely mine,” Emma tried to take Melissa’s hand but she kept them clenched.  
“W-We should get this meteor thing over with quickly,” She stuttered. “Like, now. Maybe Emma should stay here, so the Hive can’t tell where we are.”  
“They don’t know where I am,” Emma tried to explain. “I’m not connected enough. I only hear them like whispers, I can still sleep if I try. I’m barely-“  
“Uh!” Melissa cut her off but was unsure what to say. “Let’s just not talk about it.” Everyone crowded around her carefully, patting her back and holding her hand to make sure she didn’t break.  
“You want to go right now?” Amelia asked, pulling Melissa’s hair out of her eyes. “We can go, we’re ready aren’t we guys?” The group broke away from Melissa to grab the weapons they had found in the morning’s scavenge.  
“We should go, she’s right. I don’t want her condition to worsen,” Hidgens put an arm over Emma’s shoulder to usher her to the front door and Paul followed closely behind with Melissa and Amelia the last two out the door. They had to destroy the meteor for good.


	18. If I’m with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang heads for the meteor

“Hey, shouldn’t I have a weapon too?” Emma pointed out, ducking out of the way as Melissa swung her bat into the side of a man’s head so hard he collapsed.  
Melissa had been avoiding eye contact with her since she found out. “Um,” she fiddled with the handle of her bat, her face pale.  
“If you’re infected we probably shouldn’t give you weapons,” Amelia leant over to check the man’s pulse, saying what Melissa failed to.  
Hidgens kicked the man’s leg and huffed. “He’ll be fine. Once the meteor is destroyed they shouldn’t be able to remember much.”  
Paul helped Emma back to her feet. He had been trusted with two tasks: protect Emma and hold onto the grenade belt.  
“The Hive won’t infect Emma twice, why would she need to protect herself from them?” Amelia was reading Melissa’s expression carefully, seemingly translating the looks on her face into the words she was too afraid to say.  
“You have Paul to keep an eye on you,” Hidgens reminded her. “Just don’t let your guard down.”  
“Yeah, I won’t,” Emma grunted, angrily snatching up Paul’s hand and entwining their fingers. “When I hit 30 I didn’t know I’d need to be babysat.”  
“You’ve always been a bit reckless,” Hidgens sounded like he was thinking of a fond memory.  
They navigated to the Theatre on open spaces, taking main roads instead of side streets. They couldn’t risk being out numbered with nowhere to flee.  
“It’s a good thing they’re always singing, can’t sneak up on us then,” Amelia prompted.  
“It means we should be able to rest with a moderate peace of mind,” Hidgens began to scan the road for somewhere to camp out.  
“We don’t have to sleep, it’s not that late we can keep going. Are you actually tired?” Emma looked up at Paul.  
He yawned and nodded. She looked at everyone else, they were slouched and exhausted. Melissa was panting.  
“We’re human, we need to sleep,” Amelia tested the doorknob on a small house at the corner of the block. “Oh, but you’re infected so of course you aren’t tired.” The door was locked. She raised her bat and brought it down on the handle, breaking it off and kicking the door in.  
“No I’m-ugh!” She shut herself up, everyone else had nodded in agreement and followed Amelia inside before she could defend herself.  
“It’s not that, I’ve just been stuck in bed for so long,” she looked at the houses interior disapprovingly. “I can still sleep.”  
Melissa covered her ears with her hands, trying to play it off like she was brushing hair off her face. She hated it when Emma spoke about the infection.  
“We can stay here for a few hours to rest,” Amelia decided, dragging a chair over to the door to barricade it. She wiped her hands on her nice dress, looking satisfied.  
“Will you be able to get any sleep, Mel?” She asked.  
Melissa shrugged and walked away in search of somewhere to sleep, Amelia followed closely behind.  
“Emma, if you aren’t tired you can keep watch,” Hidgens pointed to the front window and she limped over to go and standby. She heard the professor murmur something to Paul before going to explore the rest of the house.  
“I’ll stay up with you, Em.”  
“Did the professor tell you to watch me?”  
“I- no, he just-“  
“It’s fine.” She groaned internally. As much as she loved Paul she just wanted a second to be alone. She hated having the watch her all night long, all the trust she had been building with them washed away in a second. She sat down on the couch by the window, listening to the quiet music in her head. She had grown accustomed to the connection she had with everyone else in the Hive and could feel them coming before anyone walked past the window down the street. Nothing she saw was entirely shocking when she could tell it was coming.  
Several times throughout the night Paul cleared his throat like he wanted to say something but Emma didn’t turn his way so he remained silent.  
“You don’t have to stay up with me. I know you’re tired. You trust me enough not to infect you don’t you?”  
Paul nodded, albeit hesitantly.  
“I can’t even do the thing-“ she coughed as hard as she could, “I can’t even throw up that blue shit, watch,” she forced Paul to watch on uncomfortably as she gagged again. “See?”  
Paul looked nonplussed. “Well you sure showed me,” he lay down on the couch, resting his head on his arm. “Good night, Em.”  
She wiped spit off her lips. “I’ll sleep soon,” she said, but she wasn’t tired at all. She may as well have been defending herself to a brick wall. Paul was asleep within a minute.  
She watched him sleep, it was a hell of a lot more interesting than watching the streets, especially when she could feel and hear them coming. Her eyes fell on the belt of grenades still wrapped over his shoulder. She wanted to be the one to hold them but Melissa was deadset on not giving her a weapon. She wanted to be the one who blew up the meteor, she was mad just thinking about it. She got out of Hatchetfield as the only known survivor only to be followed by the Hive, now she was back and it was like the whole island was out to get her. Everything went wrong, she couldn’t wait to blow it to pieces. Then she could finally get that happy life with Paul and her pot farm and make her sister happy.  
She decided then that no matter what, she was going to be the one to end it. She crawled across the couch to Paul’s side of the couch, reaching out to the grenades but just missing them. She was careful not to move too much, she didn’t want to wake him. It would be incriminating to be caught stealing weapons.  
She reached further but the extra pressure on her knee was bad for her leg.  
“Shit,” she winced. Her leg didn’t hurt when she was singing earlier. She hummed a small tune, an awful one she had heard over the radio at Beanies that was so bad she even managed to bond with Zoey over their shared hatred for it.  
She struggled to keep her voice down once she started, but the pain in her leg washed away and she could lean over Paul and grab a grenade. She shut the song down in her head, quivering at the pleasant feeling it gave her in her head.  
She hid the grenade under the couch, she could grab it on her way out.  
“Emma?” Paul woke up, rubbing his eyes. She was aware she was only inches from his face but he didn’t seem to register that very fast. “What’re you doing?” His words were slurred by sleep.  
“I was just going to sleep,” she tried to explain.  
“In the exact same spot I’m sleeping?” He closed his eyes again, shuffling over to give her more room. He threw an arm over her shoulder and pulled her in, tucking her up against his chest. “You don’t need sleep, you’re part of the Hive,” he mumbled.  
Emma didn’t quite get the intimate feeling of cuddling up next to him, she felt it was more his way of ‘keeping an eye on her,’ making sure she couldn’t go anywhere while he slept. She was still pushing down the feeling of euphoria that came with singing, she tried to cling onto the memory of the song playing over the radio so many times a day that it would give her a headache but now it seemed pleasant. She remembered complaining about it to herself as Zoey exited the break room and came back to the counter. “Shitty, right?” She said as she turned the radio off.  
“I could write a better song than that,” Emma had spat, earning a laugh from Zoey.  
“We all could,” she smiled, checking her phone before returning to the back room.  
God, it must be one hell of a dystopia if it could make her miss Zoey.  
‘Aww, you miss me?’ A voice chimed in inside her head.  
She concentrated all her energy into her next thought. ‘Piss off, asshole.’ She reached out inside her mind and could tell Zoey was nearby.  
‘Look, I know we didn’t get along then, but the Hive has shown me so much more about love. The human world was barrier between what could’ve been an amazing friendship, but now we’re family.’  
Disgusting, having to listen to Zoey was only another reason to pile on top of why she hated the Hive.  
When she shut her eyes and reached out to Zoey in her head she could see through her eyes. She was with a group of them, none of whom she recognised. They were looking up at the stars above Hatchetfield with a cheery harmony.  
In a moment that was equally agonising as it was truly intimate, she could see from everyone’s point of view. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures. She caught flashes of hospital walls and town streets and the Starlight Theatre.  
She could only stand the vision for a second though, it felt like her brain was splitting itself up. She recoiled, grabbing onto Paul’s hand and holding it tight as she tried to push herself away from the Hive and the song. She gasped as she tried to catch her breath, biting down on her knuckles as she waited for the pain to subside.  
Slowly, it ebbed away until it was only a throbbing headache. She rolled over to rest her head under Paul’s chin, grabbing onto his shirt like it was the only thing tying her to safety. She felt better so close to Paul, it helped block out all the unnecessary noises in her head until only Zoey’s remained.  
‘You should ask him to return to family, Em. We miss him.’  
“I can’t do that,” she muttered aloud. “I wouldn’t.”  
“Try sleep, Em,” Paul tightened his arms around her. “At least just close your eyes and be quiet. I did that sometimes.”  
But Emma couldn’t. She was filled with too much nervous energy to do anything but stress. “Paul I can’t, I’m infected.”  
“I know, that’s what I said. Just pretend.”  
“No like,” she sniffled, sitting up. “I’m so fucked. I don’t want to be part of the Hive but I’m a stupid, reckless idiot with dumb ideas.”  
Paul quickly sat up, shaking his head. “Don’t beat yourself up over it so hard,” he chided.  
“I can’t stop thinking about it, there’s too many voices in my head,” she forced back tears. “I’ll go blow up that meteor myself right now, I just can’t deal with them.”  
“Stop!” Paul wiped sleep from his eyes, trying to wake himself up. “You’re gonna be okay, we’re both going to be fine as long as we’re together.”  
Emma choked on her tears for a second but couldn’t fight hard enough to stop them flowing down her cheeks. “Shit!” She exclaimed. “Give me a break!”  
Her crying must’ve woke the professor. He emerged sleepily from where he had retired for the night and made his way down the hall before Emma could wipe away her tears.  
“What’s wrong, Emma?” He found room for himself on the couch and managed to get her on his lap like she was a child who had a bad dream. He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled back a handkerchief for her to wipe her eyes with. “Is she okay?” He asked Paul as she cleared her face. She felt even worse now.  
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she tried to recompose herself.  
“Don’t worry about that,” he soothed her, bouncing his leg a bit.  
Melissa and Amelia appeared closely behind him, squeezing onto the couch as well.  
“What’s wrong?” Amelia asked.  
Even Melissa was making eye contact with her again, it was clear she hadn’t gotten much sleep at all. Her worry for Emma had never left her.  
“I’m so sorry for pulling everyone into this,” she apologised only to be swiftly shut down by a chorus of disagreement from her friends.  
“It’s not your fault, Em.”  
“You had nothing to do with it!”  
“Just try and breathe in deeply, you’re fine.”  
“Yeah, you didn’t cause the apocalypse!”  
She couldn’t help but smile at their support, gurgling a weak thank you in reply.  
“Even if you don’t feel tired, you might feel better to have a lie down,” Amelia leant into Melissa’s shoulder as if in demonstration.  
“We’ll all feel better after we rest. Don’t worry Emma, you’re still part of the team,” Hidgens confirmed, stroking her back comfortingly. He laid back on the couch, shutting his eyes like he was going to drift off. “I’ll stay with you,” he promised.  
Paul nodded. “Me too,” he let her lean into his arms.  
“Good night, Emma,” Melissa managed to say. Her tone betrayed her expression, while she tried to stay calm it was clear she was relieved the general consensus was to keep Emma with them.  
The four of them fell asleep on the couch beside her in an offer of their support.  
She still couldn’t fall asleep but the panic had dulled.  
She was going to be okay, they were all together.


	19. Infection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma tries to fight off the infection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I formatted this chapter a little differently just so its a bit easier to read (hopefully!) It might come out strange depending on whether you read it on a phone or a computer I'm not the best at formatting!!

She wasn’t used to having so much time to do things, she was up all night while everyone else managed to get to sleep.  
She had moved off the couch to give the other four more room, they had fallen asleep in a huddle on the couch and while the gesture was sweet it certainly wasn’t comfortable. 

She was staring at the floor for hours, completely zoned out of reality but tuned in to the voices in her head. When she blinked she could see through someone else’s eyes. She had made an active effort to stop blinking so much but it was easier said than done.

Behind her, someone coughed as they woke up. She quickly shut her eyes, laying back against the couch to feign sleep.  
She could see through the eyes of someone around the Theatre. Through their eyes she could see many others, they all looked as troubled as a permanently-smiling zombie race could. They were tapping their feet out of time and she could feel tension in whoever’s head she was inhabiting.  
They broke out into a deep, angered song but before they could explain the object of their rage someone tapped her shoulder and she opened her eyes. She could still feel a lingering anger in her skull but couldn’t quite grasp the idea. 

“Emma, did you manage to fall asleep?” It was Hidgens. 

“Yeah, I mean I’m not that infected. Barely, like.” 

Hidgens stopped her before she could continue, “that’s good to hear,” he said with a smile, but he didn’t sound like he believed her. He rose from the couch, untangling himself from underneath their limbs.  
“Good morning,” he announced, rousing everyone from their rest. No one looked happy but she didn’t expect them to. 

As they all slowly and stiffly got up she tried to hold onto the mysterious concept in her head. She couldn’t tell why they were so furious and unsettled today. She reached out to Zoey in her head, trying to differentiate between her and everyone else. She found her old co-worker in a gathering of several other infecteds, stationed outside the theatre doors.  
‘What’s going on?’ She tried to ask but received no reply. It was like they had all created a mental barrier, keeping her out while they sung.  
She grunted and decided to try again later. 

“Morning, Em.” Paul helped her off the floor and looked at the concern present in her eyes. “Feeling any better than last night?” 

“Sure,” she shrugged. 

He gave her a quick hug before breaking off to raid any food left in the cupboard. It seemed everyone else had the same idea except Hidgens, who had walked over to a mirror in the lounge room to comb his hair. 

She excused herself to the bathroom and was careful to lock the door, she tried prodding at the mental barrier but they wouldn’t let her in.  
‘Not unless you sing,’ a voice seemed to say. It was a clever idea really, she hoped it was her own thought, it was getting hard to tell.  
She settled into the song comfortably, letting it slip off her lips. It felt strange, her mind was void of any lyrics but she seemed to be able to spew them out nonetheless.  
“We dedicate our lives to the mother. The one we lay our lives down for and love more than any other.  
We stand in arms together to protect her, entwined with one another to save our Hive mind.”  
She fell right into the harmony, letting it swallow her. The barrier shattered and everyone welcomed her into their minds again. She could see through so many eyes at once but it no longer felt painful. 

There was a knock on the bathroom door. “Emma?” 

The song kept its hold on her and it was almost impossible to stop it once it had begun. She fought with herself to at least try to lower her volume. 

“Em!” Came a second knock, much louder. 

She ripped herself away from the music, coming back to terms with reality felt like crashing back down after a high. She felt miserable and isolated and completely, utterly defenceless. She was dizzy on her own feet as she moved to open the door.  
Amelia stared back at her with a quizzical look. “Were you singing?” She whispered.  
“No, what? I was-“ she couldn’t even form a sentence coherently. “I was just talking to out loud.” Despite not needing to sleep She was beginning to feel tired.

Amelia nodded slowly, not looking away from her once. “Well, we’re just about to head out. Coming?”  
“Yeah. Got it.” She followed Amelia closely behind, watching her closely was the only thing anchoring her to her own world, stopping her from slipping back into the song. 

“Fuck the Hive,” Emma swore, shaking her head to try and wake herself. She had to remind herself she wanted to destroy it. She fished for the grenade she had pushed under the couch while everyone finished up in the kitchen.

“Professor, it’s sort of cold. Can I please wear your jacket?” Emma approached him, rubbing her hand up her bare arm for added emphasis.  
Hidgens’ eyebrows rose, looking surprised. “Oh! Of course, Emma.” He draped it over her shoulders before returning to the mirror to groom himself some more. 

The grenade slipped perfectly into the pockets, completely hidden. 

As they armed themselves and left for the road again Paul fell in step with Emma. 

“What do you need a coat for? I don’t remember being able to feel hot or cold.” 

“Just feels safe,” Emma murmured, not entirely lying. She stumbled a bit. “Maybe I’m not as infected as we thought, I’m feeling really tired.” 

“Do you think you’ll make it through today?” 

“Yeah,” she nodded confidently. “The Hive is pretty pissed today, something about the mother- the meteor I’m guessing.” 

“I don’t suppose it blew itself up did it?” He was listening carefully but mostly had his eyes fixed on the road. At one point he looked down at the grenade belt around his shoulders and made a confused noise. He placed his hand in the now vacant spot of the grenade she had stolen but didn’t say anything. “Did you guys hear that?” Paul asked. “The Hive is in a bad mood,” he repeated. “We should be more careful.”  
She closed her eyes, letting Paul guide her steps for a moment. Almost every individual perspective she got she could see was the same: a crowd of six or seven of them engaged in an angry routine. 

Most of the groups were surrounding the theatre but there were more patrolling the streets in synchronised steps.  
As the day progressed the angrier and louder her thoughts got. ‘You can’t let them come!’ They started off simple like that. ‘You must not let them destroy the meteor,’ then they grew more violent. ‘Infect them! Infect them! Join the Hive! Infect them all. Tear them apart, steal her bat, you can break their kneecaps then they can’t run, you can kill them. You have to. You have to stop them coming.’  
She had to focus all her energy into blocking these thoughts out and separating them from her own.  
“I don’t want to,” she had to vocally remind herself. 

“Don’t want to what?” asked Amelia. 

“Shit, sorry, I thought you said something.”

Melissa took a tighter grip on her bat. “Why are the streets so empty, can you tell, Emma?” She seemed unhappy to have to ask, still entirely in denial that Emma was infected. 

“They’re in groups today,” was what she wanted to say but it didn’t come out. Instead, the voices in her head came out. They were completely unstoppable and forced their way up her throat.  
“Because we have to kill you,” she stayed rather loudly. “We can’t let you destroy us, We can’t let you hurt us!” She was completely unaware of what she had said. It was like she had blacked out, her eyes were heavy and she felt like she was about to fall asleep. Only the terrified looks in everyone’s eyes made her suspect something was wrong. 

“Okay, that’s it I’m-!” Melissa raised her bat but Emma’s feet were rooted to the floor. She felt too sick to move. 

“Hey! Hey! Stop it!” Paul rushed in to stop Melissa’s bat mid swing, grunting as he caught most of the blow at his shoulder. “We can’t afford to knock her out! Did you hear what she said? The Hive knows we’re coming and she’s our one way radio! Don’t touch her!”  
“I have to save her! That isn’t our Emma!”

“She’s gone past the tipping point, Paul!” Amelia argued, trying to push him away from Melissa’s bat. “That isn’t Emma!”

“I’m-“ Emma tried to gurgle, she felt feverish. She knelt down onto the ground, wiping sweat off her forehead. “Fuck.” 

They froze, looking down at her.  
“Emma?” Paul asked.  
Even Melissa lowered her bat. 

She felt her chest heave and her stomach flip upside down, but instead of throwing up, lyrics started to pour out of her mouth. They felt foreign and unnatural in her mouth and they wouldn’t stop coming, it felt like vomit.  
She was fighting for consciousness, blinking in and out of reality dangerously fast. She felt like she was being buffeted by music, like being pushed out of her own mind. She let go for just a second and opened her eyes in a pitch black darkness.  
It was almost calm.

“Emma!?” Someone screamed. 

Then she was thrown right back into fighting for her own body, this time she won. She opened her eyes, she was standing on her own two feet again. Her body had moved without her command. Something was dripping down her chin and staining her shirt.  
“What?” She was breathless. It felt like waking up from a nightmare. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Amelia shouted, pointing a blaming finger at her. “She’s gotten worse, she has! I-I heard her in the bathroom this morning, she was singing! She’s lost is, she’s completely infected!”

Melissa raised her bat again, Paul moved to stop her while Hidgens came to restrain her arms behind her back. 

“Hidgens,” she leant into his side, feeling tired and faint. She shut her eyes but saw no visions this time. 

“Paul, help me carry her,” he requested. 

Paul’s arm slipped under hers and together they kept her standing. She stumbled with every step, unable to walk.  
“Don’t dance,” Paul whispered to her, trying to calm her. “I know it hurts to walk but you can’t dance. We can’t let you go any further. I thought I lost you to the infection then.”

She could still feel something dripping down her shirt, she managed to open her eyes and could see a stain of blue on her shirt. She wiped her mouth on her shoulder, gagging. Her throat burned.  
Her whole body was itching to sing and move around but Paul continued to whisper to her. 

“You can’t do that, just listen to my voice. Just walk one step at a time and listen to my voice.”

The morning sun crawled up into the sky, she shut her eyes to block it out. She fell into someone else’s vision again, but instead of seeing other members of the Hive she saw herself. 

Her eyes flew open in a hurry and on the horizon she could see dozens upon dozens of them, waiting for them outside the theatre


	20. Curtain call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hive begins the hunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vomiting trigger warning

The voices were louder now. Amelia had dropped her bat to clasp her hands over her ears.

The Hive let out our a synchronised, high pitched screech of a note. 

Melissa’s face scrunched up and she shielded her face with her bat. To her left Hidgens tensed up, tightening his grip around her shoulder. Paul took a step back, pulling Emma with him.

Neither party took any action.

“Hey,” Emma pulled free of Paul’s now loose grip. “Hey!” 

Nora emerged from the Hive to the front of the group, arms outstretched. 

That was where she had to go. 

She lunged as far as she could until Hidgens pulled her back. “Stay back, Emma!”

“Get off me!” She tore her arm back from his vice-like grip and pushed past Melissa and Amelia.  
She limped down the road, matching the Hive’s pitch perfectly. The song took all the pain away. Her limp turned into a walk, her walk turned into a run, then her run turned into a hauntingly beautiful ballet as she raced towards her family.  
“Nora!” She cried out, throwing herself into her arms. 

They held each other for a moment.  
This was family, this was happiness.  
She could feel her individuality wash away as she reached out to the Hive.  
She belonged to them. 

“I’m so happy to finally have you,” Nora lifted Emma’s chin up with her fingers. “You were playing with people who had a bad influence on you, but we will teach you everything you have to know.” She let go of Emma and turned her towards the people out on the street. 

She did not recognise them anymore. 

“Don’t you want to show them happiness? Won’t you tell them how much better you are?” 

“I am better,” Emma announced to the team of four. Something looked out of place, something was missing.  
“I don’t feel any pain, I feel so happy I could...” she wiped her wet eyes. “I am perfect now. I finally found it.” 

“Emma!” One of the four cried. “Break out of it!” 

She was confused, she gripped Nora’s hand. “Why would I? I don’t understand. Please let me show you how good it is,” she took a solid and sturdy step forward.  
Her whole body filled with joy. She could barely contain how happy she felt. 

“But firstly, Emma...” Nora stopped her from walking any further. “We know what you have in your pocket.” 

Emma couldn’t remember. She slid her fingers inside her pockets, pulling back a grenade.  
“We don’t need that now, do we?” Nora held out her hand to take it but Emma held on.  
It was unclear to her why she had it but she didn’t want to let go of it. There was something important about it. 

She looked up at the four people out on the street again. They were eyeing the grenade as well.  
They looked unhappy. She wanted to show them her happiness. She scanned their miserable faces, unsure what was wrong. 

“You look so sad,” she begun. “You think so poorly of my family, but it’s not half bad.” She traced the patterns on the grenade with her fingers, catching the eyes of a certain man.

He looked more distraught than the rest. She wanted more than anything to make him smile. She didn’t like the way he frowned at her, she needed him to be happy with her.

She gurgled, forcing slime up her throat into her mouth. 

Nora patted her back. “You’re doing so well.”  
The entire Hive echoed her praise. 

“Emma!” Came a girls voice. She barely had time to process anything before the girl sprinted down the road, swinging her bat so hard she took out three of her brothers. 

Emma stared at their still forms on the ground, blinking in surprise. She spat the blue slime out of her mouth. “You weren’t supposed to do that,” she tried to inform the girl but she was cut off as the bat connected with the side of her head.

 

She woke up on the dusty floor of a dark apartment building. Her hands were bound together with a rag and she was staring up at the ceiling. 

Her friends stared back at her. It took her a second to remember their names. 

“Paul?” She found his name first. 

“My god!” The professor exclaimed, helping her sit up. “She’s with us again, the real Emma.” 

“The real Emma?” Her head was pounding. The Hive wanted to know where she was. They wanted her back with them.

“We don’t have time to explain,” Amelia unbound her hands and shoved the rag into her pocket. “We have to blow up that meteor, stat. You went crazy back there. Blue slime, singing, dancing, the whole nine yards. I have no clue how we have you back.” 

Melissa gave a murmur of confirmation. She was watching the apartment door with the eyes of an eagle, her bat raised. 

“Shit, the fucking meteor.” 

“Sorry for the hit on the head, Em,” Melissa apologised quickly. “I didn’t hit you that hard, I just had to get you out of there, no matter what.”

“You scared the life out of me. I lost all hope there.” Paul pulled Emma into a fierce hug. “This is really you?” 

“Yeah um, God. My fucking head, Melissa did you really have to?” 

“Yes, I really had to! You were completely gone. You didn’t even recognise us.” 

“I don’t remember that,” she stood up, leaning against the wall for balance. The Hive was calling for her inside her head and outside the building.

The professor sighed. “Of course you don’t. It wasn’t you.” 

“So what’s happening now?” 

“Well now the Hive knows we’re here for the meteor and they’re gonna slaughter us. So thanks for that, we’re having a real fun time!” She was being overly sarcastic. Amelia glared daggers at Emma. “Why did you have a grenade on you!?”

“Because I have to-“ she couldn’t say it. “Well I need it because...” 

“There’s no time to waste. Keep an eye on the door!” Hidgens reminded her. 

Emma separated herself from the group. She would’ve felt more awake if it wasn’t for the hit to her head. She held a hand to her aching skull. “I’m going to be sick,” she hobbled off to find a bathroom. 

She didn’t know why she had woken up and not the infected Emma that was piloting her body around before. She hadn’t been hit hard enough to be cured. The virus must still be inside her head.  
She leaned over the sink, staring at herself in the mirror. Everything looked shaky. 

She started to vomit. Blue shit poured into the sink. It wouldn’t stop coming up, it burnt the back of her throat and upset her stomach worse.  
She retched, eventually starting to dry-heave.  
Once the urge subsided she looked back up into the mirror. She looked deathly ill. 

“Okay, Em,” She was breathless. “Just me. it’s just me. Let’s stay in control here.” The voices in her skull had dimmed but the ones outside remained incredibly loud. She wiped her lips and soldiered her way back to the main room where they all stood on high alert. 

“What’s the news, Em?” Paul was frantically adjusting the grenades on the belt. “Infected, uninfected? Fifty-fifty?” 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I could sing if I wanted, just to make the pain go away. But whatever Emma I am right now is handling it,” she still struggled to speak without a rising and falling intonation to her speech but couldn’t help it. It came out like a song without rhyme.

“No!” Paul turned to her and slapped her across the cheek. “No singing! It’ll make it worse!” 

“Woah! Woah!” She sobered up significantly, holding a hand to her cheek. “I’m doing my best here!” 

“I know. And you keep that up, Emma. We can’t lose you again.” 

“Thanks, I really need you to shock me out of it just then,” she wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not. The infection in her mind was fighting for control.

“We’ll both be okay, Em.” He leant over to kiss her forehead and he looked down to her lips. “Know that if we make it out of here,” he didn’t continue but she understood perfectly well. 

That was some incentive to continue fighting at least. 

“So how do we get back out to the meteor?” Amelia asked, hiding behind a couch despite the curtains being drawn shut. 

“I don’t know! Do you think they’ll just go away?” Melissa fretted. 

The Hive’s song and cry was never ending outside the door. She could hear them throwing trash cans to the ground and kicking in doors. Soon they would find them. Pressure was building under her skull. Nora and Zoey called to her in her head, pleading with her to come back home.

“It’s better to take them on the streets than in a confined location,” Hidgens steadied his breathing. “We should go out, try and make a run for it.” 

“The stairs!” Emma exclaimed. “We can go upstairs, maybe we can get onto the roof or even just buy us some more time!” While She was in control she was going to do anything she could. “This is an apartment block or some shit right?” 

No one was fast to take her idea, the musical tone to her voice wasn’t very convincing either.

“She’s still infected. She might be faking it right now. Look, see how pale she is? She’s not singing and look what it’s doing to her!” Amelia shook her head. “I say we take the good Professor’s idea. There could be more of them upstairs, and what’ll we do if they follow us up?” 

“No, Emma’s right,” Melissa lowered her bat, pushing the couch Amelia was hiding behind in front of the door. “They don’t know we’re in here. We can go all the way to the top and take the fire escape back down. How many floors does this place have?” 

Hidgens agreed. “It’s a much better vantage point. Come on, to the roof!” He raised his hand above his head. 

Paul pulled Emma up into his arms, it was faster than having her limp upstairs. “Good thinking. Please don’t be tricking us with this one.” 

Amelia looked skeptical but she didn’t have time to disagree. 

They had found them, and now what seemed like the whole of Hatchetfield was trying to knock down the door.


	21. Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last chance to destroy the meteor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wish I had the time or energy to put more effort into the final chapter bdhshfh

They were on the second floor when it began. The sound of glass shattering and wood splintering but above all the sound of song came from below as the Hive flooded into the building.  
“Shit!” Paul cursed, holding Emma tighter to his chest. “We have to move faster!”  
“I told you this was a trick!” Amelia shouted, “now we’re all going to die because you guys are too attached to that girl!”  
“I have a name!” Emma snapped, her eyes, watching Paul’s steps for him.  
They burst through the second storey door, hundreds of them following after.  
One infected man managed to make it through after them as Hidgens pushed a cupboard over the staircase.  
The man lunged for Amelia, his fingers pulling at her long hair as he tried to grab her.  
Melissa struck him in the forehead and hit him again for good measure after her collapsed.  
Amelia looked pale with fright. She brushed her hair back behind her ears, giving Melissa a silent thanks.  
“Do we go up another floor?” Paul asked, flinching every time the Hive banged at the door.  
“We don’t have any other choice!” Melissa’s chest was heaving.  
Hidgens was surprisingly spritely for his age and lead the group towards the next staircase, making sure everyone was up before taking the rear of the group.  
They could hear the sound of the door being forced open. They must’ve torn the whole thing off it’s hinges for it to make that much noise.  
“Why do we ever bother!” Amelia complained as she prepared the next barricade. Her eyes were watery with tears.  
“It’s buying us time!”  
“Well any time we buy is wasted by setting up the next one! It’s a net gain of zero seconds!” She pressed her back up against the cupboard she was moving to have more leverage. “It’s easy for you to say! You’re really living it up in the lap of luxury right now!” She yelled, quitting from her barricading position immediately to head towards the next staircase.  
“What do you mean!” Emma growled.  
“You’re being carried! Even if they catch us they’ll leave you alone because you’re still goddamn infected!”  
“She’s just frightened, Emma,” Melissa tried to justify the girl’s actions. “She doesn’t really mean that!”  
Hidgens shot a look at Amelia as they headed for the staircase. “We are not leaving Emma behind.”  
Emma clung tighter to Paul. She could see he was starting to tire already, he was slower up the stairs and stopped offering help with the barricades. She could feel how heavy he was breathing and it was becoming uncomfortable to be so close to him.  
“Paul!” She yelped as he stumbled on a step, nearly dropping her. “You’re tired,” she worked her way out of his grip, settling on her own two feet at the top of the staircase. “I can keep up.”  
“Finally doing some work on her own!” Amelia hissed, stalking to the other side of the room and smacking the wall with her bat. “Why are we moving so slowly!?”  
Hidgens ushered the group on. “Amelia, you’re panicked.”  
“Of course I am! There’s about a dozen-“ she gestured rapidly at the door. “A hundred of those monsters out there and we’re just going up! That’s getting us nowhere! They’re going to kill us and we’re still, ugh!” She threw her hands up in frustration. “What if Emma gets bad again?! Then she’ll be locked in here with us!”  
“Uh, fuck you? Amelia can you just work with us for a sec?”  
“Stop arguing! We have to keep moving!” Melissa reminded them, hitting Paul in the back with her palm the second he stopped moving.  
“Hey!”  
“Sorry! Don’t slow down!”  
They couldn’t run forever.  
Melissa could barely hold up her bat. Paul wasn’t moving as fast and Hidgens couldn’t move up the stairs as fast as he was.  
Any sort of pain or exhaustion wasn’t slowing Amelia down though, she was at the back of the group, pushing Emma up the stairs when she couldn’t keep pace.  
It was by the sixth floor that they couldn’t keep up.  
Melissa had almost crawled up the last few steps and had collapsed once they reached the landing. Paul was dizzy and sick and Hidgens couldn’t catch his breath.  
“We don’t have time!” Amelia couldn’t even raise her voice to yell. “This is all your fault! We should’ve just stayed in the apartment and found a cure, doesn’t the professor have a Biology doctorate or something!? That’d be way more better than- jesus, we know it’d be a billion time easier than trying to blow up a meteor! A meteor that’s surrounded by every single person in Hatchetfield! Why didn’t anyone think this was a bad idea!?”  
“Amelia!” Melissa barely had the energy to walk but she struggled to her feet and took Amelia by her shoulders. “We can’t fight with each other when, yeah! Every single person in Hatchetfield is after us! Emma is not your enemy! And plus, we all agreed we should blow it up! Just try to calm down!”  
“I can’t calm down, Melissa!” Amelia pushed her and she didn’t have the strength to stay upright. She stumbled, sitting herself back down on the ground.  
“Please, Amelia. Let’s not fight!” Paul helped her back up, letting her lean on him. “We have better things to do.”  
A pain struck through Emma’s head, she clasped the sides of her skull and groaned.  
‘Open the door, Emma,’ the Hive told her. ‘We won’t hurt them. We won’t hurt you. We’re here to help, to take away the pain.’  
Emma shook her head. “I can’t let you in,” she told them firmly. “Don’t follow us.”  
‘They want to hurt our mother, you wouldn’t let them do that would you? Do you want them to take away something that makes you so happy?’ She could feel them climbing the stairs, perfectly in time like a military march. She didn’t know if the war cry they sung was in her head or not.  
“They’re coming!” She warned, trying to shake the voices out of her head. Something hit the door hard, catching the two fighting girls by surprise.  
“Keep moving!” Hidgens ordered.  
‘Stop running, Emma. You must come back to us!’ The Hive instructed.  
Emma knew the Hive was going to slow her down somehow, but she didn’t think it would hurt her head so much.  
They fought their way up the next narrow flight of stairs, none of them able to run anymore.  
‘Stop moving Emma!’ The Hive commanded.  
Emma leant over the stairwell, winded. “Shit, fuck. I’m not gonna make it.”  
“Yes you are!” Paul grabbed her hand. “I’ll carry you!”  
“No, don’t! They’ll be mad at me!”  
“You worry too much about being a disappointment! Who cares if you disappoint an evil Hivemind!? Come on!” He tried to pick her up but she held onto the balustrade.  
“Why’ve you stopped!? Keep running!” Melissa called out,  
A splitting pain erupted in her head and their voices came through like they were shouting right into her ear. ‘Don’t go with them, Emma! They want to hurt us. They want to take your family away from you and you have to stop them! Push them down the stairs! Throw them off the roof! You have to stop them!’  
She broke down with a tortured scream, holding her head tightly. “Just keep going Paul!” If she leaned far enough over the stairwell she could see the Hive marching up the stairs. They were perfectly content, smiling as they sung. They walked with no falter in their step and their clothes were tidy and unruffled, clean of dirt and grime. The perfect state the Hive was in made them look like the villains.  
“Paul, I have a fucking nuts idea,”her voice was deep and breathless. “Carry me for a sec, I’m going to try it.”  
“Try what?” Emma’s breakdown had given him enough time to catch his breath. “It better not be anything stupid.”  
“Yeah it’s something stupid.”  
“What’s she doing?” Hidgens looked back over his shoulder.  
She shut her eyes, seeing from the perspective of the person leading the pack up the staircase. She settled into their mind, careful not to let the Hive pull her back in. She quieted her own thoughts, hiding in the corner of their mind as they continued up the stairs in pursuit.  
“Just be careful, Emma,” Paul’s words kept her tethered to her own body.  
She hid in the shadows of their mind like a cat ready to pounce. ‘Turn around,’ she told them.  
The song changed ever so slightly in tone.  
‘Turn around!’ She ordered more firmly.  
They did not.  
‘Stop,’ she tried.  
‘We can’t,’ hundreds of voices responded, she felt a stinging in her brain. ‘We must protect our mother.’  
‘Listen to me!’ she focused on the thought before forcing into the Hivemind.  
The leader missed one step, the two behind him bumped into him, stumbling. Then the people behind them and the people behind them and the whole Hive fell out of time. She managed to split the Hive in two as the timing was thrown off.  
‘You can’t do that, Emma,’ Nora warned. The energy of the Hive enveloped her mind and her blood ran cold.  
She felt paralysed as they attempted to drag her back in.  
“Get off me!” She shouted. She built a mental barrier between herself and the Hive, blocking them out the best she could. She scrunched up her face as she tried to concentrate on the wall.  
“She is doing something stupid!” Amelia confirmed, kicking open the door. They must’ve been at the eighth or ninth floor by now.  
“I think she did something!” Melissa exclaimed as the song dissolved into an angry ramble.  
“Oh thank god,” Amelia threw herself down on the floor, tossing her head back and panting as she tried to catch her breath.  
“Em, you okay?” Paul jostled her slightly.  
“Umfh,” was all she could manage. She tried to shake the Hive out of her head.  
‘Come back! Come back! You must apologise, you can’t do that to the Hive! You’re in trouble now, Emma! Don’t go any further with them! Bring them to us, we will destroy them for you if you can’t do it yourself!’  
Their demeaning voices filled her head, sinking her in their words.  
‘We are a family! You can’t run from your family! Those people aren’t your family. Kill them! Do not let them hurt us!’  
“Is she dead?”Amelia gaped. “Why’s she so still!?”  
The Hive shattered her mental barrier like it was glass and the Hive poured itself back into her brain, dozens of voices wrapped themselves around her brain, shouting over her own thoughts until she couldn’t hear anything her friends were saying.  
‘Come back, come back, come back, come back!’ So many different voices filled her up. Her skull felt like it was cracking open but she could not open her mouth to scream.  
She could still see from the Hive’s eyes as they moved to a faster tempo, infuriated with their newest member.  
“They’re coming again,” she tried to tell them but the Hive kept her mouth shut. Only a muffled grunt escaped her lips.  
“What’d she say?” Someone asked.  
Her head hurt too much to distinguish between voices. The Hive tore her mind apart. They crawled into every corner of her brain and flooded it with their music.  
‘Emma! Emma! Emma!’ They chanted her name like a mantra. ‘Don’t fight it. It only hurts because you’re denying us. Let us in.’  
A hot sweat broke out on her forehead and she realised she was holding her breath.  
‘Let us in and the pain will stop! If you don’t let us in they will destroy the Hive! Kill them!’  
It was like someone flicked a switch, everything seemed to go silent.  
“Emma?” Paul’s voice broke through the noise loud and clear.  
Everything in her head fell silent. She opened her eyes, she was laying in his lap and looking up at his face.  
“I’m fine,” she told him.  
“What just happened?” He asked, shocked.  
She sat upright, rubbing her head. “Nothing,” she staggered to her feet, supporting herself on the couch.  
‘Let us in!’ The voices were still outraged, but now they were quieter.  
“You know what?” Her throat was dry and her vision was blurry. She wiped sweat off her forehead and straightened her posture. “Fuck the Hive.”  
“What do you mean?” Paul rushed to stand up and everyone crowded around her.  
“I mean fuck the Hive! God, they make such a big deal about how happy they always are but they don’t even listen to me and all they want to do is give me a headache!”  
Melissa exchanged a confused look with the Professor. “Is she still like, infected?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“I am!” She stated. The Hive seemed pleased to hear this, not so much anyone else. “I’m infected but the Hive sucks ass,  
I want to destroy it so bad. The Hive wants you to want something and what I want is to blow that shitty rock right the hell up!”  
“Cracked the code?” Paul asked.  
“I mean maybe! It’s hard to be in a Hive mind when the Hivemind tells you to kill your friends. It makes it so easy to shut it out when the idea of ever hurting you guys is repulsive enough! I might be partially infected but I still have enough of a moral compass to seperate ‘let’s blow up the meteor’ from ‘you should bash in their kneecaps.’ I mean yeah I get angry but I would never have those thoughts! When everyone wants to kill one thing but you want to kill another, they say we’re family but they just hurt my head! And I’m not even that happy, this is causing me a stupid amount of stress. They keep saying ‘Let us in! Let us in!’” She put on a mocking voice. “God, the voices won’t go away but I just have to seperate my thoughts from theirs, and it’s a bit of a struggle actually so please stop asking questions, I really have to concentrate.”  
“Well shit,” Amelia huffed. “You make it sound easy.”  
“It’s not. It really hurts actually!” She hurried over to the door and pressed her ear up against it. She chuckled at the disgruntled tune the Hive sang. “Yeah! Did you hear that? I’m going to explode that meteor if it’s the last thing I do!”  
Melissa and Paul clapped at her little speech, unsure of what else they could do.  
“Come on, they’re coming again. We gotta go. We have to get to the roof.”  
“What’ll we do up there?” Amelia barked. “Get pushed off?”  
“We’re going to get up there and I’m going to explode the shit out of that rock!” She declared. “There’s a hole in the roof from where the meteor hit!” She pointed out.  
“Right through the marquee!” Paul put in.  
“Yeah! It’ll be just like playing basketball! Does anyone here play basketball?”  
There was a mutual, guilty shake of their heads.  
“I mean Paul and I have a desk job, had, I mean,” Melissa sighed. “We aren’t really that sporty.”  
“And I don’t suppose the professor gets out of the lab much,” Amelia murmured.  
“Guys, you really need to get out more. It’s really bad to be inside all day, wasting all that electricity is really bad for the planet.”  
“And do you get out much?” Melissa asked with a genuine curiosity.  
“Yeah, I get out a lot. I like sports and going jogging, beats sitting behind a computer all day.”  
“We get it, you’re healthy, you get out. Thanks Greenpeace girl for that vital bit of information, it’ll come in real handy if we don’t die today,” Paul rolled his eyes.  
He never did get along with Amelia.  
“It doesn’t matter, as long as Paul has good aim,” Melissa waved her hand to dismiss the thought.  
She went to question Melissa but quickly remembered that he was the one with the grenade belt. “I have good aim,” she raised a hand.  
“Oh yeah, you stole a grenade. What’s that about?” Amelia questioned.  
“You should return that to Paul, dear,” Hidgens tried to take it from her pocket.  
“Okay guys I don’t know if you noticed but Paul missed the meteor real bad last time. I love you Paul but you have shit aim.”  
Paul crossed his arms, his eyes rolling to the side. “I was being ambushed, that wasn’t my fault,” he mumbled.  
“Now let’s get a move on, I want Zoey’s stupid voice out of my head, I had enough of that before the apocalypse,” she waved them towards the staircase, the second she opened the door the wailing overtook the room.  
They were not happy with Emma’s little speech at all. They picked up their pace as they sprinted up the stairs after her.  
“Shit! Let’s get moving!”  
Paul took her hand to help her bolt up the stairs.  
Determination kept her going for the first two flights but by the third her leg was giving in and she wasn’t fit enough, she got a stitch in her side and was struggling to catch her breath.  
The Hive got closer and closer until they weren’t two or three flights down but only two or three steps back. They reached out, their finger tips brushing Emma’s back.  
It was times like this she was glad she wore her hair in a bun, especially after what happened with Amelia on the second floor.  
Their war cry grew louder and more aggressive. She could feel the song under her skin but could resist the urge to sing.  
As much as she wanted to, there were more important things in life right now than a catchy tune and she was a little too breathless to belt out a note.  
Her leg needed rest, it wasn’t healed enough for her to be running up stairs so fast. Her bones screamed at her to stay still and her lungs pleaded with her to stop so she could catch her breath, all the while the voices in her head dared her to sing.  
Melissa pushed the roof top door open and everyone dashed out.  
Emma bolted to the edge of the building, reaching into her pocket for the grenade.  
“Close the door!” Amelia yelled behind her. “Quick!”  
The Hive forced its way through, only five or six of them managed to slip past the door before Hidgens could pull it shut.  
There was a sickening slam as the rest Hive forced itself up against the metal door, trying to burst through.  
“Shit!” Paul swore, reaching to pull out the pocket knife Hidgens had advised they bring for emergencies as someone grabbed his wrist.  
Emma spun around as Melissa grunted behind her, someone had caught her too.  
The infected outnumbered her group despite their small numbers.  
Her heart stopped at the horrifying realisation that she knew all the people on the roof with her.  
Bill had Paul’s wrists tight in his hands and Ted had apprehended Hidgens by the door. Melissa was fighting with her boss again and- where was Amelia?  
She had no time to think about it as Nora approached her, looking impressed.  
“You don’t have to fight the Hive,” she told her, her voice echoing inside Emma’s head. It made her dizzy.  
“Before you took the Professor from us he did go on about how you liked to play games. But we’re over that now, aren’t we? Come on.” She held out her arms again.  
Part of her wanted to run to Nora so she could finish up everything and infect her friends and they could all live happily together in the Hive, she wanted Nora to take away the pain in her leg and her lungs and her head and make things better. But the other half of her said that was a stupid idea. She didn’t want that. She wanted to blow up the meteor. That desire went deeper and held more genuine feelings behind it. It made more sense than the nonsense the Hive had drilled into her.  
“Why are you so hesitant? Come here, Emma!”  
Her voice lagged three seconds behind in her head, and the Hive echoed her words whenever she spoke.  
This Hell made migraine feel like a comforting hug.  
“You’re hurting my head,” Emma told her, taking a step back.  
“Just accept us. Listen to what we have to say. You did so well before! All you have to do is sing with us, Emma!”  
She could barely comprehend what Nora was saying when it was overlapped by so many other voices. When she shut her eyes she could see through Nora’s.  
“I don’t want to join the Hive.” She raised the grenade.  
“You wouldn’t do that,” Nora shook her head. Her image was starting to fade.  
She shut her eyes to rest them for only a second, hoping it would make the dull pain behind them lessen.  
Now she could see through Bill’s eyes and through Ted’s. Her friends were struggling against their counterparts as they tried to force the infection upon them.  
“I will!” Seeing her friends fight only made her more angry. “Just watch!” She put a finger in the hoop of the pin, preparing to pull.  
“Don’t be ridiculous, you wouldn’t want to disappoint us would you?” She took two steps forward and Emma took three back. Through Nora’s eyes she could see how close she was getting to the edge.  
She eyed the end of the roof anxiously.  
“I don’t, I really don’t Nora but I have to.”  
She blinked again, she could see through Melissa’s manager’s eyes as he pulled her wrist behind her back, forcing her to her knees. She could see from members of the Hive inside the building, their hands beating at the metal door until they were bleeding blue.  
She did not know where Amelia was.  
The Hive was still banging and slamming at the metal door, the voices in her head stopped mimicking Nora. Instead they shouted ‘Let us out! Let us out!’  
Her headache grew worse. She grew weak on her legs.  
She no longer needed to blink to see through everyone else’s eyes, all five visions overlapped with hers.  
The pain tore up and down her body, making her shake.  
Nora moved up and grabbed her wrist, trying to reach the grenade. Emma backed up, unsure where the end of the roof was now, she could barely see through her own eyes.  
She took another step back and could feel the curb of the roof. She leant back as far as she could, trying to keep the grenade out of Nora’s hands.  
Nora held onto Emma’s collar with one hand, the only thing keeping her from falling. She had leant so far back she only had one foot on the roof.  
Hundreds more visions crowded her eyesight. She could see the beaten and crooked metal door seventy times over, she could see the last bit of hope vanish from Melissa’s face, the stress lines on Hidgens’ forehead and the marks on Paul’s neck as Bill tried to strangle him.  
Nora could see how close she was to falling off the roof, if she decided to let go she would fall.  
“You have to throw it!” Someone yelled, or maybe she imagined it. All her senses seemed to have left her except pain.  
“Emma!” Came the same voice.  
All of a sudden Nora’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, she fell back and pulled Emma with her. She collapsed on top of her old manager, tilting her chin up to see Amelia.  
She was holding her bat above her head. “I told you I get out a lot.”  
“Holy shit.”  
“Sorry for doubting you back there on flor two or three or something,” she begun sheepishly. “Sorry for saying you were going to push us off the roof, clearly it isn’t like that.” She nudged Nora’s limo body.  
“Where were you?!” Emma hissed, fighting her way to her feet and struggling to focus on Amelia.  
“There were monsters on the roof and you guys looked like sitting ducks! I hid! I thought you were going to blow it up!”  
Emma brushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes as Amelia’s bat connected with the back of Ted’s head.  
She stopped to catch her breath as the visions left her head one by one as Amelia took care of them.  
“Were you really just going to let them struggle?”  
“Well if that girl was going to induct you again,” she pointed the bat at Nora’s still form as she paced back to the centre of the roof. “Then I was going to be a bit out numbered. That’s rule number one, don’t let them out number you. Rule number two is to get them when their vulnerable, which is why I hit her then and not while she was just standing about!”  
“Is that what they teach you at Greenpeace? Jeez!” Emma rubbed her neck where Nora was holding her collar.  
Melissa eased herself up off the floor with a groan. Paul slid the pocket knife back into his suit pocket, watching Bill carefully like he expected him to get back up.  
Hidgens straightened his jacket and combed his hair with his fingers, anxiously trying to figure out what was happening.  
The slamming on the other side of the door vanished.  
“Huh?”  
“Rule number three,” Amelia continued. “Silence is never a good thing! The meteor, Emma!”  
The knocking was replaced with a agonising wail and the sound against the door worsened.  
Emma fumbled with the grenade in her hand, trying to yank out the pin.  
“Now!”  
Just as the pin came out the door was thrown off its hinges completely.  
Emma tossed the live grenade off the rooftop and down through the hole in the theatre roof as the Hive forced their way through the door, fighting each other to get out first.  
The explosion was louder than the voices in her head had ever been. The air turned hot.  
One of them managed to grab Melissa before something knocked everyone off their feet, the Hive fell like dominoes.  
The theatre collapsed with a satisfying boom.  
The Hivemind froze before falling limp like puppets being cut off a string.  
Emma felt something in her mind shrivel up and die. It made her skin crawl and her body shiver.  
She felt entirely empty for only a second.  
Her head was silent. She could only hear her own thoughts. She stumbled upright, breathless.  
“Oh my god!”  
“Shit, oh my god!” Amelia stepped over the pile of bodies and ran towards Emma. “The meteor! It’s gone!”  
Melissa brushed an unconscious woman’s hands off her shoulders, running up to Amelia and Emma and pulling them into a tight hug. “Emma! Amelia!” She cried. “Oh god! Oh my god it’s done!”  
“I’m so proud of you Emma,” Hidgens threw his arms around all three girls.  
They all embraced in a teary-eyed hug until Paul spoke up.  
“Emma,” he was breathless.  
Everyone pulled out of the hug, watching Emma and Paul excitedly.  
“You saved everyone!” He rushes towards her, taking her up under the arms and spinning her around.  
“Paul!” She laughed, ecstatic. “Did you see! I blew up the meteor!”  
“She did!” He put her down, pointing at her. “That’s my girlfriend!” He cheered.  
Emma elbowed him playfully, “oh shut up, I’m incredible, I know.” She leant over the side of the roof. “Fuck you, meteor!”  
Melissa giggled at Emma’s antics. “Do you think everyone will remember anything when they get up?” She looked over to her boss, unconscious on the floor.  
“I don’t think so, Melissa. I don’t remember a thing from my time with the Hive,” Hidgens hypothesised.  
“Well, that’s good I think,” Amelia scanned the pile of people that had once made up the Hive. “They’ll be up soon, I’m sure.”  
“There’s no more voices in my head,” Emma smiled, placing her hands up by her temple and practically purring. “Just my own thoughts, no songs or music or Zoey or Nora in my head. I’m me!”  
Paul wrapped his arms around Emma, pulling him close to his chest. He looked down at her, excited. “Just you? No more infection?”  
“I’m clean!” She confirmed, standing on the tips of her toes.  
He leant down to kiss her forehead. “How does it feel?”  
“Dumbass!” Emma stomped on his foot and he pulled back, shocked and confused.  
“You said you’d kiss me for real!”  
“Ah,” Paul’s face turned red. “Yeah,” he covered his face, embarrassed. “Well can I kiss you?”  
“Of course!” She stretched up to meet his lips. He was sort of an awful kisser but she couldn’t really care less. She leant into him, he leant back to accomodate for her, they probably could’ve fallen over if they weren’t careful. She dug her nails into his back as she kissed him harder.  
“Okay, okay, that’s perfectly enough.” Hidgens pried them apart. “We’re all very excited the meteor is exploded.”  
“Yeah, you don’t have to eat his face like that, gross,” Amelia turned away, covering her eyes.  
“Was that your first kiss or something, nerd?” Emma loved it when his face went red like that. “You suck, we’ll work on it.”  
“Tone it down a little, you’ll make Melissa cry,” Amelia pointed to the girl, her face was just about as red as Paul’s.  
“You don’t think you could’ve saved that until you were behind closed doors?” She could barely talk, she was probably more embarrassed than Paul.  
The first members of the newly-destroyed Hive began to stir, shifting about with pained moans and confused looks.  
“I suppose we better get around to getting back to a normal life, no more musical zombies or meteors or hitting things with bats,” Paul shot a jokingly accusing look at Melissa.  
“Oh lay off it, Paul,” Melissa stuck her tongue out. They were back to their cute little sibling rivalry type dynamic that Emma loved so much.  
Every time she looked back at Paul she wanted to kiss him again. She felt like a happy-go-lucky teenage girl in love.  
She wanted to settle down at look at his goofy red face every day. She wanted to leave Hatchetfield and buy a big house and have a room for Melissa and Amelia and Hidgens and never have to leave any of them.  
“Hey, I hit a lot of things with my bat too if you guys forgot,” Amelia huffed playfully, throwing her bat to the floor. “Glad I’ll never have to do that again,” she said with a smile.  
“Aren’t we all?” Hidgens threw the pocket knives he had been holding onto into the pile Amelia had created.  
Paul unstrapped the grenade belt, gently placing it on the pile before looking over to Melissa and her bat.  
“Oh, I’ll keep this actually, I play softball.”  
That made Emma laugh.  
They were a power team of idiots, sure, but they were a found family. Things were fine now, she was going to be okay just like everyone told her. She was going to be happy with Paul and everything had gone in her favour in the end. It was a perfect ending for her.  
“You look like you’re going to cry,” Paul wiped her watery eyes with the corner of his thumb. “Are you okay?”  
“I’m so fucking fantastic,” she grinned, tempted to lean in for another kiss.  
“Do you remember what you used to say to me when you were in the Hive?”  
“Probably not,” Paul shrugged. “What did I say?”  
“You’d go on and on about being together forever and I’d always say ‘shut up Paul, that’s stupid! Not until the apocalypse is over!’ But it really wasn’t stupid!”  
“Wow I can’t believe I’d say something that dumb,” he shook his head. “I sounded like such a loser.”  
“Oh shut up,” she took his hands, leaning up against him. “That was beautiful.”  
Paul gave an unconvinced laugh, smiling at her.  
“And now the apocalypse is over, so we can be together forever, or whatever you said.”  
“Sounds stupid,” Paul remarked casually. “I hate how it rhymes, let’s think of something else.”  
She shoved him lightly. “Don’t be picky. I’m not a romantic, I can only quote other romantic shit you’ve said. I’m not coming up with anything else, you have to.”  
“Fine, now we can be just ‘together.’ Does that sound fine?”  
“Fine is perfect, Paul. Yeah, let’s just be together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyways we love a title drop 
> 
> Thank you so much to all those people who have been reading since the start, it was funny like six chapters ago when I was like ‘yeah probably only two chapters to go’ but I was indecisive and kept writing.  
> I fully intended to only write two or three chapters and just leave it as it was because I didn’t expect anyone to comment but people did and it’s really helped me continue to write instead of procrastinate and I appreciate you guys so much What the hell 💕💕💕💖💕


End file.
